LAB – What is the heart rate measurement of Beats PowerBEATS Pro 2 is worth?

PowerBeats Pro 2 are not content to broadcast music. They also propose to measure the heart rate of their carrier. With a decade of R&D for its Apple Watch, Apple has taken care to equip each earpiece with four key components. Among them, we find a LED sensor emitting a light in order to reflect the circulating blood inside the vessels, a photodiode which captures the reflected light, an optical lens helping to manage the lights transmitted and received, as well as an accelerometer increasing precision.

Mainly intended for athletes, this function is reminiscent of recent Momentum Sport to Sennheiser, or older models such as Gear Iconx of Samsung and the Sport Pulse From Jabra, both released in 2016. This does not rejuvenate us! The monitoring of the heart rate is therefore far from new on the headphones, but the function therefore seems more than ever on the return. For the best? We brought Beats's latest headphones on an output with a variety of enough to give us an opinion.

Comfortable and well integrated headphones … in iOS

If it is not a question here of expanding on the design of PowerBeats Pro 2, any more than their audio performance elsewhere – our full test already details these points -, it must be recognized that they are Not unpleasant on the ears. The headphones have appreciable port sensors to make an automatic reading/break when put or removed, and easily connect to any Bluetooth source … for music at least. However, this is another story to read the heart rate.

As we write these lines, we have failed to access biometric measurements from an Android terminal. We therefore bet that an update will be offered when they leave. In the meantime, we have therefore had no choice but to borrow an iPhone and, without surprise, everything worked wonderfully. Recall that Beats belongs to Apple, which therefore offers integration into small onions as he knows how to do so well for his products. The headphones are automatically detected and the measures are transcribed within the Health App without great efforts.

Compatibility for the time restricted

We also associated the PowerBeats Pro 2 with the Nike Run Club application for our test, again without major problems, except that we would have preferred to use another application, like Strava. The compatible applications are unfortunately few and the headphones are also not compatible with Ant+ to graft itself on a watch or a bicycle counter as a simple external sensor. This is a shame, even if we had to add the Polar H10 belt to our Fenix ​​7S for this test; The Place du Cardio was therefore already taken. As with our watch tests, the belt has the role of providing the reference measures during our exit.

Before coming, let's finish with the purely practical points, stressing that the Pro 2 PowerBeats can only measure the heart rate with the two headphones in the ears. Impossible to obtain measures with only one, but they offer an excellent transparency mode if you fear that you can not hear traffic. We were also able to discuss without problem by carrying them, even if they happen that they push a few ghost frequencies from time to time. Really nothing serious.

Results worthy of the best watches, despite some inaccuracies

It is therefore good with the two headphones in the ears – but also an iPhone in the pockets, the Fenix ​​7S on the wrist and the Polar H10 on the bust – that we end up getting started. The first 4 kilometers are traveled at a more or less constant pace and the pro 2 PowerBeats follow well the variations in heart rate even if they draw a slightly less smooth curve than the belt, probably due to a more measurement frequency Bass: they only take the FC once every 5 seconds. The biggest delays, before the FC falls, are actually due to the forgetting to deactivate the automatic breaks in the Nike Run application and the red lights that stopped the race. The headphones added only a small beat to the average of 159 bpm calculated with the belt on the entire route and the two devices were granted on a maximum frequency of 173 BPM.

The second part of our outing is a little more perilous, since it takes place on the Montmartre hill. It begins with a small tour with slow and crippling with fractional on hilly loops of 400 and 1200 m, distributed over 3 blocks with 2 min of recovery. Enough to raise the cardio very quickly … and very high to the point of losing the headphones a little. They recorded up to 188 BPM against 181 at most for the belt. Overall, the powerbeats slightly overestimated the FC in intensity peaks, but the differences remained very reasonable. This is evidenced by the small beat that still separates the average frequencies calculated this time on the entire training: 159 BPM for headphones, 158 for the belt. Above all, all the peaks recorded by the belt were also recorded by the headphones, and this at the same time. Reactivity is often lacking in watches, and Beats headphones can therefore boast of competing with the best, even if they remain a little less precise than a chest belt. It remains to find them use cases.

Difficult to identify use cases

Because if the PowerBeats Pro 2 provide relevant measures, and even precise enough to train according to the frequency zones, they also require the use of a watch or a smartphone. We could certainly imagine vocal alerts to indicate the zone changes, but the FC measurement does not work without a compatible device nearby and can really imagine following a drive program so sharp without the support of a GPS for The pace and distance calculations? However, smartphones are often imprecise on this point and not frankly practical to consult in activity, which leaves us with the watches and mainly those of Apple which are already among the most precise of our comparison on the cardio part. So there is little to gain, unless perhaps use the pro 2 PowerBeats in the room with your smartphone.

The Sennheiser solution, by opening up to Polar and its ecosystem, itself open to the main sports applications (Strava, Adidas Running, Komoot …) seems a little more relevant, but the PowerBeats Pro 2 would above all have won to offer an Ant+connection. There is no doubt that they could complement many watches with hazardous FC measures, but, given their limited compatibility and their price, it seems more judicious to invest in a belt or an armband and a pair of headphones a inexpensive.