BEATS PILL 2.0

Small and portable. Able to generate large sound. Sound breaks up on both ends of the spectrum. Comparatively pricey.

The Beats Pill 2.0 is a refreshed version of their highly portable speaker. Obviously named after its shape, the Pill 2.0 retains pretty much all aspects of the first version, but adds the ability to act as a portable battery for charging your mobile devices via USB, plus a range of new colors to choose from (black, red, white, silver, pink and gold). Made of plastic and metal components, the Pill 2.0 showcases four speaker drivers underneath that front grill and the rubber base below helps to keep it in place when you’re playing music at full blast.

At just 310g, the Pill 2.0 is certainly portable, and a soft protective pouch is included to keep your speaker safe from scratches when you tuck it away into your backpack or suitcase. What’s more, at just 7.5 x 1.8 inches, this is a speaker that fits comfortably in one hand. We were curious to see how the Pill 2.0 would hold up against the rest of the competition, given how much smaller it is, but this little speaker more than held its own in terms of sheer volume.

Unfortunately though, louder doesn’t necessarily mean better. As with the original Beats Pill, the thumping bass that is such a trademark of Beats by Dre headphones is non-existent here. On the contrary, bass was lean with little to no decay to speak of.

Distortion can also an issue here as we found the sound broke up some on both ends of the tonal range – squeaky on the high notes, and a bit strained on the lower end. Keep it on tracks that stay within the midrange; pop tracks that focus mostly on vocals perhaps.

The Pill 2.0 does take the original Pill’s ability to daisychain speakers another step further though. If you get another Pill 2.0 and tap the speakers together twice, you’ll get automatic stereo separation - one will play the left channel, and the other the right. Something to consider if you’re planning to get more than one set perhaps?