Beats ditches the Powerbeats, Beats Solo Pro, and Beats EP
What you need to know
Beats has discontinued the Powerbeats, Beats Solo Pro, and Beats EP products.
The news comes on the same day the company announced the new Fit Pro earbuds.
The product lineup was beginning to get unwieldy.
Apple-owned Beats has now discontinued three products as it looks to do away with some of the cruft that makes up its unwieldy lineup. As part of the move, the Powerbeats, Beats Solo Pro, and Beats EP products have been removed from sale. The move comes on the same day that Beats also announced a new pair of earbuds in the form of the Beats Fit Pro.
The culling of the herd, spotted first by MacMagazine, means that while still lengthy, the Beats list of products is now more manageable than it once was. Trying to access URLs that previously took buyers to Apple Store pages for the products now redirects to a list of all Beats products.
Of the three products killed today the Beats EP were the ones living on borrowed time. First introduced in 2016, the headphones did not feature any smart functionality nor active noise cancelation and even sported the now-defunct 3.5mm headphone jack.
The Beats Solo Pro arrived in 2019 and offered a Lightning port by way of wired connectivity, while the Powerbeats were announced last year and replaced the Powerbeats3. The two wireless earbuds weren’t entirely wireless — a cable connected them to each other — and now appear very old school beside the likes of AirPods, AirPods Pro, and the new Beats Fit Pro.
The Beats products also sit alongside Apple’s own AirPods and AirPods Pro, not to mention AirPods Max. That’s a lot of headphones already competing for just the one set of ears and it appears Apple and Beats decided that at least three models could go. Now we wait to see if there are more losses on the horizon.
