Beats Solo Buds Available at Select Apple Stores Starting Today

('https://www.macrumors.com/2024/06/20/beats-solo-buds-available-at-apple-stores-today/')

the earbuds can only be charged when the case is connected to an external power source.

Who thought this was a good idea to cut the cost?

Case looks very 90s. Reminds me of my first see through Game Boy

18 Hours is pretty awesome. you can charge connected to an iPhone or any other power source. Not a big deal in real life usage

I understand that something had to be cut out to make that price point a reality, but not having a charging/battery case is a deal breaker for me.

With 18h battery life, I don't find lack of a charging case that bad. I have a powerbank with me either way - and couldn't you just charge them directly from an iphone? I also have to charge the case of my airpods pro which have around 24h of listening time with the case, so that's only 30% more.

I just think they look huge, I'd miss the advanced connectivity of airpods and ANC and most important: The sound of beats usually isn't that true to the original recording. Too much bass, which works for some music but ruins other (looking at you, Homepod).

Who thought this was a good idea to cut the cost?

I can go on amazon or run to any nearby consumer electronics retailer, or bigger grocery store chain, and pick up any number of <$30-$50 wireless bluetooth earbuds. Most of them would be around half of these $80 Beats or less.

And while features, sound, pairing, and design is probably way worse than these new Beats, exactly all(!) of these cheap wireless earbuds have a battery built into the charging case that recharges the earbuds without any need for the re-chargable charging case to be plugged into an external power-source.

Then again, if the offer great audio and actually last 18 hours at 50% then maybe they're still a decent deal.

Idk. It's hard for me to imagine having tried so many Beats. They all had one too many drawbacks for me.

It should be noted that there's also no auto-switching like all AirPods have (even the old Gen. 2) as these Beats Solo do not feature any of Apple's great H1 or H2 chips.

Also no ANC and no water or sweat-proofing. So probably not a good fit for workouts. 😕