Beats announces new budget buds, Solo 4 on-ear headphones

Beats is expanding its product range with its cheapest wire-free earbuds yet and its first new on-ear headphones since 2019.

The wire-free earbuds - the Beats Solo Buds - will retail for $129.95 in Australia, and are set to launch in June. For comparison, you're currently looking at a minimum of $229.95 for a pair of Beats earbuds.

As a cheaper pair of earbuds, the Beats Solo Buds don't have features like noise cancellation and don't have any formal water resistance. They make up for this with a massive 18 hours of playback time per charge. The trade-off here is the included case doesn't have its own battery. Instead, you recharge the Solo Buds by docking them and connecting the case to something capable of outputting power (an outlet, a phone, or a laptop) via USB-C. A five-minute charge is said to give up to an hour of playback time.

The Solo Buds will be available in a choice of black, grey, purple, or red with a translucent case.

Meanwhile, the Beats Solo 4 are a new take on 2016's Beats Solo 3, rather than 2019's Beats Solo Pro. As such, they're also missing noise cancellation, and feature a design more in line with the 2016 model rather than the 2019.

While the Solo 4 may look similar to the Solo 3, Beats says they've been re-engineered for better sound quality and have new microphones. They also add support for personalised Spatial Audio and dynamic head tracking.

Battery life has been upped to 50 hours per charge, and a 10-minute charge is said to provide up to five hours of playback time. Notably, the Beats Solo 4 still have a 3.5mm cable that can be used when the headphones are flat. They can also play lossless audio over USB-C. Both cables are included in the box.

The Beats Solo 4 will sell for $329.95 in Australia. They can be ordered from today and deliver starting from Friday. You can get them in a choice of blue, black, and pink.

Neither the Beats Solo Buds or the Beats Solo 4 feature an Apple H1 or H2 chip found in AirPods and other select Beats products, but still feature seamless pairing across any Apple device to the same iCloud account, Find My, and Hey Siri.

The new Beats can also have proper Android support, including Google Fast Pair, Find My Device, seamless audio switching, and there's even a Beats app.

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Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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