You cannot escape them. All the celebrities in the US made them part of everyday culture, the hot thing to have on your ears, around your neck or on your head — Beats by Dre. Beats have announced their new workout wireless Powerbeats are now here for Australians to buy.
The Powerbeats are another deep integration from Apple and Beats engineers and the result is clearly noticeable. Powered by an Apple H1 chip the new Powerbeats are sure to offer great performance while still being extremely practical and lightweight.
Of course there is not much point having great sounding headphones if they are uncomfortable. The new housing with a redesigned adjustable earhook allows the headphones to sit comfortably in the bowl of the ear. To aid in the fit it comes with four different sizes of ear tips.
Workout headphones also require some form of water and sweat resistance and the Powerbeats offer this with IPX4 certification. The headphones will give you 15 hours of playback in a single charge and with just 5 minutes of charging able to provide another hour of playback. They are charged by a lightning cable but Android users do not fear, one is included in the box.
Available in black, white and red colours the Beats by Dre Powerbeats can be purchased from the Apple website for $219.
As Beats by Dre is now owned by Apple you can assume they will work best with iOS devices but we have a pair on the way to us to see just how well they perform with an Android smartphone. Stay tuned for that one.
I bought the previous iteration of these, and in less than a year, one of the ear hooks and the controls broke, and the microphone stopped working. The thirty dollar knock-offs I got from Kogan are still going strong over a year after buying them, though!