Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Forgot About Beats by Dre?”.
Hey, what’s up mkbhd here beats by dre what comes to mind when you hear that name, it might have been a while. Maybe you think of uh large, overpriced, headphones with way too much bass, or maybe you think about like small sleek earbuds for sports – maybe either way whether it’s one of those or something in between the arc of how we got from these to these is fascinating. So one of the earliest videos i ever did about beats by dre was called the truth about beats by dre, and you know i know pretty juicy headline, but this was back in 2014 when beats had a very different reputation of high fashion, a very different set Of products and a very different position as a company this week, beets just announced these new studio buds and while i don’t personally think they’re perfect they’re, absolutely not the best at anything, they do feel way more in line with the rest of the headphone world. Now so what happened? A little history beats started up in 2006 right so the first eight years or so of their existence. They built up a certain reputation with their audio products, mainly their headphones, which were a stylish super cool borderline fashion accessory and if you did use them as headphones well cool, they had plenty of bass, but audio fidelity was not the number one concern, but these were The days when beats would get their headphones on as many of the heads of the most influential celebrities and athletes and pop stars as humanly possible. They were the kings of this, which made them super cool to anyone who followed them or look up to these people. But it was also pretty ironic because there’s almost no chance anybody who mixed and made music actually used beats by dre at any point in that process. They just didn’t sound that great well, i should clarify uh. They didn’t sound that good to audiophiles or people who actually cared about sound quality or accuracy, but to most people to most people uh the boomy bass. Heavy profile of these was actually a feature because they were listening to bass heavy music anyway, and they were just listening for fun, and so people were actually very willing to pay extra for headphones.
This cool that sounded like that and extra money they spent, because this was the main subject of my truth about beats by dre video but clearly beats spent way more on marketing than they did on r d and it paid off because they were able to charge A lot they were selling 2 3 400 even 500 headphones and that allowed them to capture something like 70 of the high-end headphone market, which is wild because beats buyers. They’D never spend 500 bucks on any other pair of headphones, but beats had just created this commanding buying power. This alert to them, which was super powerful kind of like how tesla today can get people who were never really into cars to spend way more than they normally would to get one so beats, is eating up premium market share they’re, making tons of money. This is around the time that they get on apple’s radar and so apple at this point had not made any wireless headphones at all. Just the earphones that come in the box with the iphone yeah so uh after some weird dances with htc and monster cable apple ended up buying beats for three billion dollars, which today is actually their still largest acquisition ever so since that moment, i’ve kept an eye On beats and the stuff that they’ve kept making because beats has continued making stuff, because you know any number of things can happen when one huge company swallows up another with an acquisition. Sometimes they do it for the talent.
Sometimes they do it. For the portfolio of products or the technology, or just the name with the case of beats, there’s a couple things one. They essentially turned beats music streaming service into apple, music and two.
They started making wireless audio products. They introduced air pods in 2016, then airpods pro and home pod and homepod mini and airpods max. But curiously, as you’ve probably noticed, beats kept making beats headphones, they kept the name, they kept the logos and everything and they kept sort of running the company beats by dre, as if it’s sort of now just working closely with apple. It actually makes a lot of sense beats was making a lot of money.
They were making about a billion dollars a year with headphones when apple bought them in 2014, and you don’t just throw away all that revenue all that brand cache apple’s, not stupid, but once apple started, making headphones, they made sure beats, didn’t directly compete with airpods, like Some of the other clones that i’ve made a video on linked below they more lived alongside them as a high fashion, alternative type of thing, and it would be fine if customers picked beats by dre on the shelf next to the apple headphones because they’re all it’s All apple beat success is apple’s success, so if you’ve followed, beats headphones since then, they’ve slowly toned down their image a little bit and they’ve actually toned down their pricing a bit too uh, but they’ve they’ve definitely amplified their headphone lineup, so their headphones started. Switching to charging with lightning ports, instead of usb to match the iphone, they started, adding w1 and then h1 chips to instant pair with apple products, and they started integrating more natively into the iphones audio control features. Basically, they became better and better alternative headphones for. The iphone, which is cool.
More options is always better, but they definitely lost a little bit of their character a bit. So that brings us to this week when apple announced, these the new studio buzz these wireless earbuds, and these to me these are the most interesting headphones that they’ve released since that apple acquisition, because you know, of course you know, there’s more features and things and tech Has gotten better since 2014, but with these suddenly they’re trying to be dual native and work just as well on android as the iphone so right off the top android users are overall a bit more price, sensitive, so guess what their pricing has gotten even more competitive Than ever, these will go for 149 with active noise cancellation. Now that’s not cheap, but that beats airpods pro that beats sony’s mark fours and a lot of others with anc. That’S a pretty good price for earbuds with anc.
Now, there’s definitely still some downsides i’ll get to those in a second. But overall i think they’ve done a pretty good job and then there’s actually even a couple. Pretty big changes they’ve made for android users that i didn’t expect number one they switched to usbc on the case like i said they were on this streak of lightning chargers, but this makes sense, of course, for the android crowd and the case itself is pretty compact, Which is something i can’t say about some previous beats earbuds, so this is getting down to just be a little bit bigger than air pods, and i do like this matte red here, though you can also get them in white or matte black, but then number two. These headphones, actually don’t have apple’s h1 chip in them so, like i said, they’re trying to be dual native and feel the same on either iphone or android right.
So a lot of these h1 chip beats in the past would work amazingly well for the iphone they’d. Have all these features they’d instant pair, but then they’d be missing a bunch of those features when you try to bluetooth pair them to an android phone. So these these still instant pair with the iphone and plug into ios’s native audio controls, but they lack the icloud connected switching. So if you’re someone who’s switching headphones between an iphone and a mac and an ipad all the time, these don’t do that. So these probably aren’t for you, but now they have an equally awesome and equally quick pairing process on android, which is very much appreciated, so they connect to the beats app. Then you get all the same controls.
You have your access to google assistant, the same control over noise cancellation versus transparency mode. It’S great these! These are the first beats in a while that i feel like i can actually recommend for android users. And, yes, i did say noise cancellation. These studio buds use their mics to deliver active noise cancellation.
That, at this price, is not super common and it’s decent. Of course it’s it’s best with white noise, but it is not as strong as airpods pro or sony’s xm4s, but i believe it is better than samsung’s attempt with galaxy buds live. So a more popular newer feature you’re, seeing on noise canceling headphones now is transparency mode. So using those microphones that were used for noise cancellation to actually mix in real world sound, so i can long press on the button here to switch between noise cancellation and transparency and the transparency mode on these is okay, basically, airpods transparency mode is so good that It could literally fool your brain into thinking: you’re not wearing headphones. Like you just hear everything, and so everything else kinda looks bad in comparison to those, but by comparison these sound just a bit muffled, so voices aren’t quite as clear and clean as you’d like them to be it’s not terrible. I mean you still hear your environment, so if you’re out walking in the streets, you can hear cars or bikes coming up behind you.
If someone were to call your name, you could definitely hear it, but it’s just not quite as good as airpods. If you’ve ever heard those, nevertheless battery is eight hours with anc off five hours with anc on, so that’s pretty decent and then the case gives you an extra 10 to 16 hours and it’ll also fast charge the buds and give you an hour of listening time. In five minutes, if you’re nearly dead, so how do they sound? How do the latest beats by dre in 2021? Actually sound, i mean they sound fine, but they definitely still have the the classic beats by dre. Sound signature.
They’Ve always had basically even to my non-audiophile ears, they’re, not the best sounding earbuds, i’ve ever heard, but they are crisp and still have plenty of bass and highs, but are much lighter on the mids, especially where vocals tend to be. Basically, it’s not my preference for sound profile. It works well with some genres of music like hip hop, but it does feel like big chunks of the middle are missing for a lot of other types of music. They stay in my ears fairly. Well, though, thanks to the silicone tips and they create a nice seal, i got ta have soft tip earbuds for them to stay in my ears. I would not trust these to stay in my ears for working out, though, like i would trust things with tips.
For example, wing tips – always just thousand percent, stay more snug in my ear. The funny part, though, is anytime. I skip a song or hold for assistant or do anything involving clicking that outside button on the bud. I also end up pushing them a little bit further into my ears anyway, which is maybe an unintentional bonus, but also sometimes gets annoying. Overall, though i’d say, i’m basically baseline satisfied with how these sound i leave them with anc on all the time. So that’s kind of nice that shortens the battery a bit, of course like i mentioned, but that’s how they sound best.
They have ipx4 water resistance too. So if i do work out with them, there’s no worries about sweating a little bit or walking through the rain, or something like that. So these are not the best overall.
I would give that to galaxy buds pro for best overall package or to sony’s wf-1000 xm4 for just straight up sound quality, but these are cheaper and these are more competitive than ever before. But that’s that’s really. What happened is the competition woke up so yeah to anyone else? Who’S been watching beats products over the last couple years.
This is just a very interesting. It’S a fascinating thing to do to make a product that works just as well on android as it does for iphone like for an apple owned company. It’S pretty weird, but that’s more competitive for all of us and it’s better for beats it’s better for us, and so that is the new beats.
They know the beats name, it’s still big, but it doesn’t have nearly the same pull in the headphone world that it did like 10 years ago, like people aren’t about to go out and spend 400 bucks on heavy clunky headphones that don’t sound that great in 2021, Like there’s youtube reviews now, they would get called out real fast, but they’re still perfectly willing to send lebron james. A pair of these – and you know it’s free real estate – they’re – definitely still leaning into the fashion part but they’re still around they’re. Changing it up a little bit and i like where this is going, but also yes, people did forget about dre.
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As you just look at it from different parts of the room in different light, it’s wild, so you can check them out at the link below, along with their brand new airpods cases, but that has been it. Let me know what you guys. Think of this new look beats by dre. If you would buy, beats headphones for your android phone today in 2021. That’S been it thanks for watching catch, you guys later peace, .