Powerbeats Pro 2 Can't Play Music While Tracking Heart Rate on Gym Equipment

[carswell]

Designed by Apple Intelligence or maybe Siri?

 

[Veinticinco]

It reminds me of the iPhone antenna debacle years ago. Remember when Steve Jobs doing interviews saying I get perfect reception everywhere without a case, no problem, nothing to see here.

“You’re contracting your myocardium wrong!”

 

[Godspeed8230]

When I run on a treadmill, I wear my Apple Watch and a run timer on that. But I don't want to be forced to look at the watch for an update on time/distance. The highlighted feature was that you could connect the HEADPHONES to equipment to display heart rate. Same story... I'd rather glance at the treadmill panel. But now I can't unless I decide to wear headphones that I can't use as headphones... WTF?!

Couldn't you just connect the Apple Watch with the treadmill for your heart rate to be displayed on it and listen to music streaming from your Apple Watch to your headphones?
And most treadmills display time/distance anyway, no?

 

[Fulcanelli]

... and in addition to all the reported flaws: I cannot even measure my HR when doing Apple Fitness+ exercises (w/o Gym equipment and w/o listening music). Absolutely botched, Apple!

 

[gco212]

I see the issue now that I'm watching the video, and I get the frustration

Doing HIIT workouts (like Sprint intervals), for instance, it's really nice to have HR displayed/tracked on gym equipment, but I'd want my own music off my phone for that (I have custom I've made for that exact type of workout), and these can't do that

It's basically pick one device to connect the Beats to, for everything, it sounds like

I'm sure this will get downplayed by many, by understand the more hardcore exercise user frustrations.
It's an odd limitation in 2025 and with where BT tech is at this point

HIIT actually does make sense for this. I'm no Apple fanboy and was not trying to blindly protect Apple, but honestly couldn't think of where this would be a problem. But HIIT where you're moving everywhere, it would be nice. Thanks!

 

[Surf760]

Do people actually pair their EarPods to gym equipment? That seems like a fairly niche use case to me.

If you track your workouts on your phone this isn't an issue.

When you pair your watch to gym equipment you get the metrics in both places. More importantly, things like distance ran are actually accurate because they are fed from the equipment instead of what your Apple Watch is guessing you did.

This is a pretty botched launch.

 

[TVreporter]

Check the heart rates of the folks who knowingly let this happen… some heads may be rolling today.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Clearly the correct move here is:

Powerbeats Pro Max 2​

Featuring simultaneous dual Bluetooth connections
$299.99*
*Get 3% Daily Cash back when you buy from Apple.

 

[John_Blackthorne]

I find it hard to believe Apple would ship these without knowing its headlining feature on iOS was trash.

But if you think about it, the Apple users who buy this product already have an Apple Watch to track their heart rate.

 

[Chungry]

That doesn't really answer my question. Plus. the heart rate monitor works just fine.

Assuming you are in the Apple ecosystem and you own an Apple Watch or any other fitness watch for that matter, two heart rate monitors seem kind of redundant, no?

This is the wrong way to think about it, and it offers cover for Apple. Not everyone in the ecosystem gas an Apple watch. I don't think very highly of them. Should people who prefer another watch or none at all be satisfied with a compromised experience - because that is what this ultimately is. I say they should not. Assumptions are not good.

 

[iToph]

after this and the 16e I lost my faith in apple

 

[Anonymous123]

Well that’s embarrassing. The most valuable company in the world and they can’t even get the headline feature right.

This is once again proof Apple has too many products (and services) going on at once. They need to pare down the lineup and focus on making just a few products within a category with the best features on the market. This scattershot approach of releasing new products with select features for random segments of the market at random times isn’t working.

 

[Chungry]

I find it hard to believe Apple would ship these without knowing its headlining feature on iOS was trash.

But if you think about it, the Apple users who buy this product already have an Apple Watch to track their heart rate.

I challenge that assumption

 

[MrENGLISH]

At this point I'd take an AI recreation of Steve Jobs over Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

 

[Gabebear]

When you pair your watch to gym equipment you get the metrics in both places. More importantly, things like distance ran are actually accurate because they are fed from the equipment instead of what your Apple Watch is guessing you did.

This is a pretty botched launch.

I understand wanting data from the treadmill and why you'd want to pair your watch or phone... but what is the use-case for pairing AirPods as well as a watch/phones? I'm guessing AirPods wouldn't work the same way

Is the only use-case so you see the heart rate from your AirPods on the gym equipment's screen?

 

[Will Co]

Oh deary deary me. How? How does that get past the no doubt multitude of design reviews, testing reviews, performances results, and just engineer to engineer chat? What on earth is going on at Apple?

 

[dmccombs]

Couldn't you just connect the Apple Watch with the treadmill for your heart rate to be displayed on it and listen to music streaming from your Apple Watch to your headphones?
And most treadmills display time/distance anyway, no?

Folks could certainly do this. If they do take this route, they could use any bluetooth headphones. The powerbeats 2 would provide no significant benefit over the older powerbeats, airpods, airpods pro, etc.

 

[Fuzzball84]

This is innovative

 

[Chungry]

This is innovative

Can't innovate my sea bass or something

 

[jgreg728]

Wow that's a bigggg OOF GOOF BIDOOF right there.. What were they thinking?!

 

[TomaxXamot]

At $350 CAD I can see why people are pissed. However I would never use that feature and was far more disappointed to find out they lack Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness and Precision Finding (no U1 ultra wideband chip). Not to mention the Hearing Aid feature that they’re probably only omitting in order to differentiate the flagship AirPod Pros. Wish they’d release a cheaper model without heart rate monitoring that has the aforementioned features.

Damn. I really wanted to get a pair of these.

 

[Techwatcher]

I feel like many people are reading this wrong. You can listen to music while it records your heart rate, the issue is you cannot also connect to gym equipment while doing so. This is not a big deal. And most people this deep in already own Apple Watches.

 

[HazeAndHahmahneez]

bad look Apple…why not go all out on every product you make then let the chips fall where they may…it def seems as others have said that with so many products being released in the same category, features get axed and customers are left frustrated with unneeded compromises and sacrifices. For shame

Yeah….Steve Jobs not passing would’ve been verrrry interesting to see

 

[Chungry]

I feel like many people are reading this wrong. You can listen to music while it records your heart rate, the issue is you cannot also connect to gym equipment while doing so. This is not a big deal. And most people this deep in already own Apple Watches.

Didn't miss or read this wrong. I think it's reasonable to expect the features to work this way. It's unreasonable to expect an Apple watch as a prereq

 

[Mousse]

I feel like many people are reading this wrong. You can listen to music while it records your heart rate, the issue is you cannot also connect to gym equipment while doing so. This is not a big deal. And most people this deep in already own Apple Watches.

What happened to...

?
🤔🤔🤔
You shouldn't have to jump through so many hoops.