Beats Studio Buds just got a massive free upgrade

(Image credit: Apple | Beats)

published 27 January 2022

The line between Apple's excellent Beats Studio Buds and its equally excellent AirPods Pro is getting awfully blurry. A new firmware update for the Beats earbuds brings some important new features that make Apple's brightest earbuds even better.

The update addresses one of our key criticisms of the Beats Studio Buds: unlike the AirPods Pro, you could only pair them with one device at a time. The firmware update changes that, offering the same instant pairing as its siblings so you can pair to your Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Apple TV with a single tap.

An excellent update that'll install automatically

In addition to the pairing update, the new firmware also has a better way to see the battery status – hold the case near your phone and it'll pop up a panel showing the battery status of the Buds and the case – and there's a new volume option that you can use to control volume with the B button via iOS or the Beats app for Android.

The firmware update is an over-the-air update, so it should install automatically when your Buds are connected to your iPhone.

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

An excellent update that'll install automatically

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