I wasn’t expecting it, but the $150 Beats Studio Buds were some of my favorite earbuds in a long time. Beats’s typical boomy sound is fun, and the Studio Buds in particular both fit my ears like they were made just for me and work really well with Android phones.

The $200 Beats Fit Pro are different. They still sound great and offer some of the best ANC and transparency you’ll find in premium earbuds today, but their $50 price hike is largely in service of Apple-specific features that don’t do me much good. Unless you carry an iPhone, these aren’t an easy sell.

Design, hardware, what’s in the box

Beats is very proud of the Fit Pro’s new stabilizing fin, a feature we’ve been seeing on buds from companies like Jaybird for years. It works as well here as anywhere: it nestles snugly into the folds of your ear to keep the bud in place, which is extra important during workouts.

But despite the emphasis Beats puts on the universality of the Fit Pro’s fit (the company calls them a “true one-size-fits-all”), the fins are a permanent fixture of the earbuds — they’re not detachable, so you can’t swap in another size. That’s especially disappointing to me, because, while I’ve never had an issue with this style of earbud before, the Beats Fit Pro are not comfortable in my ears. The fins are just a hair too big and too rigid, and no matter how much I fiddle with them, they start to get irritating to wear after an hour or two. I’m confident they won’t fall out, sure, but I sometimes wish they would. That said, all ears are different, and it seems like most people who’ve tried the Beats Fit Pro have found them perfectly comfortable.

The fins extend up from each bud’s single hardware button, which makes for a pretty slick look. Those buttons control play/pause and skip, plus either toggling ANC, turning volume up and down, or calling up the Google Assistant. The buds also support Hey Siri on iOS.

The Beats Fit Pro’s charging case is clamshell-style like we’ve seen with Samsung’s recent earbuds. It seems a little larger than it needs to be, but it’s still slim enough to fit in that dumb little change pocket in my jeans. It charges with USB-C, but it doesn’t support wireless charging. That’s a major blunder at this price, even (and maybe especially) on the Apple side: iOS’s biggest fans are sure to be drowning in MagSafe chargers by now.

Along with the buds and their case, your $200 nets you two additional ear tip sizes, a tiny little USB-C cable, some instructional literature, and a Beats sticker.

Sound quality, features, and battery life

I’ve said before I like my earbuds a little bassy, and the Beats Fit Pro definitely deliver on that front. Kick drums really thump, and basslines rumble along with satisfying fullness. I didn’t notice any pronounced compression or connectivity issues, either.

I understand preferring a more studio-accurate sound to the slightly artificially dynamic profile Beats picked, but there isn’t much I’d change about the EQ. I think these earbuds sound great. That said, you should be able to change the EQ, even if I wouldn’t personally want to. You can’t. The Beats app doesn’t do much of anything, really — you’ll probably only ever need it if you want to swap the earbuds’ button function or find out which size ear tip Beats thinks you should be wearing.

That’s not the worst thing, I guess, considering the app is a mess on Android. In my experience, it can’t even see the Beats Fit Pro when they’re connected to your phone unless you leave the buds in their open case and hold the pairing button for a second or two. Seriously — I had to do that almost every time I wanted to use the app. I’d prefer long presses on the buds control volume, but I eventually switched back to ANC controls and left it that way to avoid having to deal with Beats’s cruddy software.

Call quality is great: Everybody I talked to could hear me more or less as well as if I’d been holding the phone to my face. The ANC is some of the best I’ve ever experienced in earbuds, too. But the Fit Pro’s transparency mode genuinely wows me every time I use it — environmental sound comes through so clearly it’s almost uncanny. You can easily have conversations without pausing what you’re listening to, provided it’s not too loud.

And on these buds, it probably won’t be. The Fit Pro have a weirdly low max volume; I spend most of my time at 70 to 80 percent, which, on other earbuds I own, is often too loud for sustained listening. With good ANC, I can’t think of a situation where I’d need to crank my media much louder than the buds can muster, but I could see plenty of people being dissatisfied there.

Android users miss out on Fast Pair this time, even though it was supported on the earlier Studio Buds. Like AirPods, the Beats Fit Pro do support iOS’s similar feature, and they move seamlessly between Apple devices that are signed into the same account. But I only own one Apple device at the moment, so that’s not super useful to me. The buds also work with Apple’s head-tracking simulated surround sound feature, but again, that’s only for iOS users — and besides, it doesn’t seem particularly valuable in earbuds made for wearing during physical activity.

The Fit Pro do pick up in-ear detection, though, a feature I missed in the Studio Buds. If you pop either earbud out, your music pauses, and transparency mode kicks in on the other one. The buds are also smart enough to know they shouldn’t resume playback once they’re back in your ears if you manually paused it before taking them out.

Battery life is pretty normal here: you’ll get five or six hours at a stretch with ANC or transparency on, or seven or so with those features off. The case holds enough juice to fill the buds three additional times.

Six hours with ANC is fine; most people don’t wear earbuds for entire workdays without ever taking them out. But these suckers cost 200 bucks, and ideally, I’d expect them to be better than fine in every respect. True wireless earbuds charge fast, though, and the case charges with USB-C, so managing that battery life isn’t much of a hassle. It’s not a great look that you can’t charge the case wirelessly, considering how hard Apple has been pushing wireless charging for its recent iPhones.

Should you buy them?

The Beats Fit Pro are a weird case. They offer powerful sound, and have great ANC and transparency modes. Plus, if you’re living your best Apple life, they’re pretty feature-rich: they’ve got no-brainer device pairing, seamless switching between devices, hands-free voice assistant integration, and head-tracking spatial audio. You might be annoyed your expensive new MagSafe charger can’t top them up, but that’s about all I can imagine an iPhone user missing here.

I can't imagine why anyone who doesn't use Apple devices would shell out 200 bucks for the Beats Fit Pro.

But on Android? They’re definitely still good ANC earbuds, but the day-to-day experience of using them isn’t anything special. They don’t have Fast Pair or multi-device pairing, the app is a pain in the ass, and every other big-name pair of earbuds that costs this much comes with wireless charging.

I can’t imagine why anyone who doesn’t primarily use Apple devices would shell out 200 bucks for the Beats Fit Pro, and considering where you’re reading this, that’s probably you. But if you do use an iPhone every day (or want earbuds specifically to use with, say, your iPad or your Apple TV), you’ll probably love them — provided your ears aren’t shaped like mine, anyway.

Buy them if:

• You regularly use Apple devices.
• You're an Android user who doesn't need many bells and/or whistles.

Don't buy them if:

• You're on Android and expect a full feature set for $200.
• Earbuds with fins are uncomfortable for you.