Apple Raises Price of Beats Flex (But Hurry, You Can Still Find Them Cheap)

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Sadly, deals that are almost too good to be true seldom last – such is the case with Apple’s Beats Flex headphones.

These full-featured wireless earphones arrived a little under a year ago at an astonishingly affordable price of only $50, pacing in the same W1 chip that had originally made its debut on the $159 AirPods, and had never previously graced anything less expensive than the $100 BeatsX, which they effectively replaced — at half the price.

This meant that, for only $50, you could get a set of earbuds that would work seamlessly with your iPhone, pairing up right out of the box and even offering support for Audio Sharing, so you could listen to your favourite songs and YouTube videos with your friends. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.

Apple has recently snuck the price of Beats Flex up by $20, without explanation. This puts them at $70 now, which still isn’t a bad deal, to be fair, but it’s nowhere near as mind-blowing as the original $50 price tag.

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To be fair, the BeatsX which came before originally launched at $150, before dropping to $100 in the wake of new AirPods and Powerbeats headphones. The Beats Flex offer everything that the older model did, plus USB-C charging instead of Lightning, and 50% more battery life, coming in at 12 hours of listening time versus the eight offered by the BeatsX.

Apple hasn’t provided any reason for the sudden price increase, although we suspect it’s likely due to the kind of supply chain constraints and surging chip costs that have affected the entire consumer electronics industry and even automakers.

The price increase was first noticed on Apple’s website by blogger Pedro Henrique of MacMagazine and it appears to be a global change, with the Beats Flex now selling for $90 in Canada, up from $70 previously, and R$899 in Brazil from R$579.

The Beats Flex do not appear to have been updated in any way, so this is strictly a price increase, but the good news is that you can still snatch up a pair at lower prices elsewhere, as it seems retailers like Amazon haven’t caught up yet — although they’re also understandably selling out fast right now, so you’d better hurry.

Even at the higher price, the Beats Flex remain an attractive option, with 12 hours of playback on a single charge, plus a Fast Fuel feature that gives you another 1.5 hours of playback after only 10 minutes of charging.

More significantly, they’re still the most affordable headphones that pack in Apple’s W1 chip. This means they offer features that you won’t find on any other sub-$100 earphones, including automatically pairing them with your iPhone and having that synced via iCloud to your iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

You can also easily switch between devices, and of course, use Audio Sharing with any combination of AirPods or Beats headphones to listen to audio from an iPhone or iPad with your friends.

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