(New) Beats Flex Wireless Earbuds

These may be great for some people, but they had some major flaws for me.I'll start with the Pros- The sound quality is ok given the price point- While plastic, the materials did not convey a sense of it being cheap- USB-C for charging makes it easy to charge anywhere.And now the ConsFirst off, I am going to start with the fact that I loose things. I loose them easily and I loose them often. This is why I don't go with truly wireless earbuds. If it can't be attached to my body, I will loose it. This is why I go for bluetooth earbuds which do have a neckband or wire connecting the two pieces.With that said:- The neck band was pretty awful. Now I will admit, this kind of neck band is not my preferred style, but this wrapped my neck in a death grip and the longer thinner wires connecting that to the actual earbuds were too long and constantly getting pushed into my face. I went poking around online to see what maybe I was doing wrong. I found a youtube video from someone who claimed he was going to show the right way to wear these things. He stood there proclaiming their fashion while wires looped on and in front of his face. I think that as a society, we have been trained to have very low expectations.However, I will give that over time the band and the wires might loosen up a bit. So maybe not a failure, but certainly annoying.However, given the style, there are no realistic alternative wearing styles. You wear it behind your neck or you have a long (nearly 3ft), heavy, unwieldy weight hanging in front of you and really pulling the earbuds out of your ears. This is also not a style that is friendly to those with sensory issues that affect their necks.I will also state that the material of the neckband is also a magnet for my hair. My hair is long and it curls. Which means every time I needed to take it off, I was usually pulling out a few strands of hair with it. And, because of the overall length, I was having to do this frequently since every time I needed to wash my hands, I had to remove them to keep them from getting dunked.- The in line batteries are big, bulky, and heavy. Which is why, I am assuming, this has the kind of neck band it does. but even with that neck band and trying all of the different tip sizes, I struggled keeping these in my ears. The fit was never quite right. I will also say, this may have affected my feeling on the sound quality, as poor fitting tips can affect sound quality. Others may not have the trouble I did here.This also confused me as my previous set of earbuds only had 1 smaller battery and had about 3/4 the battery life these advertise. I don't quite understand why these are so large and heavy but only give a minimal battery life improvement.- Controls were split across both sides. The power button and charging port are on the right side while the other controls were on the left. I think I would have been much happier if they had all been grouped together. Possibility I could train muscle memory here and it not be an issue, but it was annoying.The buttons for volume/track skipping are on the skinny edge and not the wider part. You wouldn't think this wouldn't be a big deal, but it actually made it difficult to find the buttons. When grabbing the battery/controller, it naturally flips to where your fingers are on the wide side, not the narrow. I then had to struggle a little (because the neck band is so stiff) to turn them a quarter turn in order to access the buttons. Way more clumsy than it needs to be.Now I thought all of the items above were things I might be able to get used to, but there were two fatal flaws that meant none of the above really mattered.- These do not work well with Android. You cannot see the battery status on Android. You can install their app, which wants way more permissions than I was comfortable seeing (you do not need to know my location!), just to see what the battery life might be. I'm an old techie. I do not like installing worthless apps just to do something that should be very basic functionality. Those in the Apple ecosystem will likely have a different experience here, but Android is pretty miserable.They also do not have any other means of checking battery other than waiting until they get down to 10% and the light pattern changes. Which, btw, you can't see if you are wearing them. So not helpful.- There is no cover for the USB charging port.Seriously, I might be able to tolerate everything else, but I live in the Seattle area. Rain isn't something that happens occasionally, its a fact of life. A pair of earbuds that I can't wear because it might start drizzling/raining just isn't usable. I don't expect earbuds of this price point to be water proof, but I would have hoped they wouldn't be as vulnerable as they are. I mean it seems ridiculous that they couldn't have included a 5 cent piece of plastic, rubber, or silicone as a cover.I would also be uncomfortable using these if you are going to be sweating a lot. The way these lay around my neck, I just can't see how you could avoid getting moisture in there.