Beats Studio Buds+ to release May 18 with transparent look and price bump
Beats Studio Buds+ to release May 18 with transparent look and price bump
Amazon strikes again, leaking the Beats Studio Buds+ specs, price, design and release date.
Apple’s next pair of earbuds, the Beats Studio Buds Plus, will debut on May 18 according to an Amazon page both listed and pulled late Tuesday. The leak was first spotted by The Verge, and can be confirmed via the Wayback Machine.
The Beats Studio Buds Plus were all but confirmed last month, when 9to5Mac discovered that a developer version of iOS 16.4 added support for a pair of earbuds referenced by that name.
The new Studio Buds Plus have a similar form factor to the original Beats Studio Buds, with a few under-the-hood changes. In the listing, Apple touted the Studio Buds Plus’ three new acoustic vents, which the company says will improve audio quality and reduce pressure.
Active noise-canceling and transparency mode upgrades are likely the biggest changes coming to the Studio Buds Plus, backed by new microphones that Apple claims are three times larger than the previous model.
The new hardware, plus an audio processor, allows the Studio Buds Plus to offer active noise-canceling that is 1.6 times more powerful and transparency mode that is two times as effective as the original Studio Buds. Unlike other Beats or Apple earbuds, the Studio Buds Plus do not include an Apple W or H-series chip.
The upgrades come with an increased price tag, as the Studio Buds Plus will be priced at $169.95. That’s about $20 more than the original Studio Buds, which retailed for $150. The Studio Buds experienced routine discounts that lowered the price to under a hundred dollars, though, and are currently priced at $99 on Amazon.
The Studio Buds Plus will slot into the Beats lineup just under the Beats Fit Pro, the company’s premier noise-canceling earbuds. Those are priced at $199.95, and were just refreshed with three new colors, so it’s safe to say the Fit Pro won’t get a hardware upgrade in the near future.
Studio Buds (and the upcoming Studio Buds Plus) are a great option for people who use Apple and Android devices, since they work equally with both operating systems. Features like one-touch pairing, automatic switching and voice assistance are available on both platforms.
The earbuds notably offer a transparent colorway that looks a lot like the Nothing Ear (2) and Ear (Stick), which popularized the see-through design. Now, they’ll have some competition.