Don’t fancy Apple’s AirPods, but want a pair of fancy wireless earbuds with long battery life? If you can put up with a slim silicon neckband connecting your two earphones, Apple’s new BeatsX should be on sale in Apple Stores around the country soon enough — or so we’re told. Maybe the more we say it, the faster it’ll happen…
Apple’s store listing still says the earphones are unavailable either in black or white, but iStockNow sayts that the release is imminent — flagging a bunch of activity on Best Buy’s product page as well as Apple’s own. The fact that there’s a store listing in the first place is a good sign.
Following on the heels of Beats’ Solo3 Wireless and the sports-focused PowerBeats 3, the $199.95 BeatsX straddles the line between fashion and fitness: the earphones are small and light enough that they won’t get in the way of a workout — and they also have optional silicon wingtips that will hold them inside your ears — but they’re also still Beats and look very nice at the same time.
They use Apple’s low-power, long-distance, high-quality W1 chip, which is a genuine step up in wireless quality versus regular ol’ Bluetooth. It’s the kind of thing that means the BeatsX gets 8 hours of battery life despite not having any huge space to actually store a battery at all; charging over Lightning gives you 2 hours of that playback life after just 5 minutes. [Apple]