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Teardown Reveals Beats Headphones Contain Metal Weights to Give Impression of Quality
A common industrial design trick?
Update: It appears these are not genuine Beats headphones.
Prototype Engineer Avery Louie tore down a pair of Beats headphones to see what makes them tick (or thump) and what he found inside is pretty sad. Amidst "generic drivers" and the cost-reducing tricks of the trade many of you ID'ers are familiar with—designing plastic parts that snap together rather than use screws, etc.—Louie found this gem:
A little bit of weight makes the product feel solid, durable, and valuable. One way to do this cheaply is to make some components out of metal in order to add weight. In these headphones, 30% of the weight comes from four tiny metal parts that are there for the sole purpose of adding weight.
Enter a caption (optional)I've got no experience with the industrial design of consumer electronics (my specialty was structural package design, where we're trying to make everything stronger but lighter). Louie mentions that adding metal weights to a product is "a somewhat common trick," although he doesn't list other examples.
But if any readership would know, it would be you guys and gals. So, ID'ers among you working in the consumer electronics space, have you seen—or god forbid, had to do—the adding-weights thing before? Anything you can tell us without violating an NDA?
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Just a heads up to everyone here; the Beats Solo HD in the teardown aren't genuine, but high grade replicas. The real deal features a dual-driver design and proprietary titanium-coated technology. And the earcups are supposed to have to parts - a plastic inner and an aluminium outer - not completely spray painted plastic.
Whooops!
Sorry, but how does the fact that there are replicas made say anything about the consumer in this case? If the majority of people were running out and buying replica Beats products, you'd have a point. But in this case, the guy did the tear-down was the fool who purchased replicas.
My education is in product design and engineering. I designed for Apple in the mid 80s working on a number of projects, and have continued that sort of work for the last nearly 30 years.
Hi Michael, thanks for the input. As I wrote to Quan, given your experience, would you be willing to provide some information/quotes for a follow-up entry on this subject? It would really help. Please let me know if you're game and I'll reach out to you. Thanks!
From my point of view, Those parts are hinges and making it out of metal serves the purpose of strength and durability. I personally have sat on a pair of sony's and snapped the plastic hinges. This is a positive in terms of quality. Those parts would not last if it was made out of plastic. This just seems very obvious to me.
This is probably the most accurate response in here. The metal parts are indeed the hinges of these headphones. Sure, they could have made them from injection molded plastic but they would have inevitably failed after prolonged use. My guess is that this was not a ruse on the designer's part, but a way preserve the integrity of the hinges.
FWIW: People seem to think that at most successful companies, there are groups of people sitting around a table crafting strategies to deceive customers. Beats is especially susceptible to this perception. IMO, you're giving these corporations too much credit. In my experience, the truth is quite the opposite.
you would pay 300+ dollars for a pair of shitty headphones like those? you are the crazy one sir.
No, I agree the headphones are over priced, But I have seen them close up and from a design and engineer standpoint, those hinges has real function to it. The claims of it being only for weight is completely wrong.
Wow, I just looked up the price for these, their outrageous for what you getting. I paid the same amount for my Bower & Wilkins P5's, which are absolutely fantastic headphones by the way. This kind of reminds me of the new Apple MacBook 12, costs them less than 250 to make but they charge over a 1,000 dollars on top of the build cost. People are just crazy for buying from this company.
Quan, those aren't hinges, you may want to re-read the quote.
they look like hinges to me... seems atleast, the two large metal parts do serve a particular function, not just to add weight.
Hi Rain, I think that's my main issue with this quote/teardown, people are only reading the quote and believing it without even looking at the product.
Sure, love the content on core77. Great if I can contribute to it.
Great, thanks Quan. Can you drop me a line at rain [at] core 77 -dot- com? And that goes for any designer reading this (with consumer electronics experience) that's willing to provide input!
Hi Quan, thanks for pointing that out, good catch. Would you be interested in contributing some information/quotes for a follow-up entry on the subject? I value the opinions of those of you with experience in particular fields--it's part of why I love the Core77 readership--and could use your input. Ditto for any of you reading this with ID experience in consumer electronics, if you're willing to provide input, please leave a comment here stating so and I'll reach out to you. Thanks!
Those headphones are stupidly expensive for absolutely no reasons, i never got a pair, never will unless i find a pair somewhere, this is not something i will spend money on, my Turtlebeach are wayyyyyyyy more effective then this shitty pair of "beats"
and TurtleBeaches aren't even good!
Once I disassembled the lid of a perfume bottle. There were two metalic weights glued inside. It did feel expensive.
That is fascinating! Early on I interviewed with a "beauty" company where I would have been designing such bottles, but I didn't get the job. If I had, maybe this would have been me doing this....
I have taken apart perfume bottles too, are those not magnets? A lot of the bottles do have it so the the lid snaps and aligns together.
They were not magnetic. The lid was just wedjed on the stem.
I'm not against adding weight if a product just feels better with a certain amount of heft, aka movibg the CG, but on headphones you really want them light as possible.
For a power tool that requires balance, and even a toy gun, it makes sense to me. But as you point out, I want my headphones as light as possible. The Beats weights seem like a ruse to me, I think that's why it bugs me.
I worked for some (not to be disclosed) consumer electronic companies, especially in the field of iphone docking stations and speakers. Most new small speakers work with very light neodyme magnets instead of the old heavy iron magnets - which makes no difference in sound quality at all - but they feel very light and less worthy. So, to compensate, we have to screw a steel backplate into the wooden housings to keep the feeling of quality by weight, which is a big, BIG factor in the audio sector.
That is fascinating. It has to impact the shipping costs, no? Or was it too incremental to add up?
Actually it doesn't, as those things are shipped via container by the thousands, fully assembled - which means you pay by volume, not weight. Most of those speaker-docks are manufactured in only a couple of factories in asia, where products of various labels run from the same production line.
Yes, this is fairly common.... and it is not always because something is 'cheap' ... the company I work for has a few products that go into heavy duty applications, that either have had metal weights or epoxy/potting compound added because it didnt 'feel' heavy duty enough.
We design to meet our customers demands/requirements, and sometimes those designs are not logical, but when keeping the customer happy is the goal, that is just how it goes. Some may say to educate the customer about the technology, but you can not always count on the customers learning ability.
Sometimes weight is added because the old version was klunky... and even though the newer version is more robust and reliable, the weight finds its way back in...
just my two cents.
NT, are you able to say what the products are? Just curious.
everything from warning lights (like strobe beacons etc) to CB radio handsets.
LEDs have come a long way, and thus, there are not as many large electrical components required... so stuff like epoxy to fill and support the large components are not required. But marketing finds value in wasting a dollar worth of epoxy to add weight to keep the customer happy.
In regards to handheld controllers/mics, those are like the tools/guns mentioned above, where balance is key, and they are not only just 'filler'...
So, I don't quite understand - you now have evidence that a) the "weights" are really hinge parts thatmare metal for durability reasons, and b) these are counterfeit headphones anyway. Yet the article headline continues to state that they're Beats headphones, and that they contain misleading weights. Nothing here indicates that the entire article is wrong unless you dig into the comments. Yes, you've posted your follow up "Uh-Oh" article, but where's the link to that at the top of this one? Numerous sites on the net are linking to this article and its sensationalist headline, and you're doing a disservice to those readers and the Beats company (I've no relation with them, for what's it's worth).
I work in the audio industry, and it's funny to watch as consoles/controllers get smaller due to digital audio, however the connectors remain the same size and weight. Sometimes there's a concern that a plastic chassis prevent a unit from tipping over, and we end up going with bent or cast metal. But as demonstrated here, weight is a really important factor in audio paraphernalia.
I've bought like 5 different ear bud headphones just to find ones I like. For headphones, the sound isolation ones are even funnier. Closed Studio headphones with the music up to nominal value, you can't hear ANYTHING outside the music. And some of the best headphones in the World, sorry they don't even cost $250.
This is common. I worked for Motorola for several years and recall a project where a charger for use for fire departments was in question. Said charger was was not received well initially as it was "plastic" and cheap (mainly due to weight perception). A quick update was made to add some metal plates internally drastically increasing its weight...magically, now it was a higher quality, with the ironic twist that now is was more apt to be damaged in a drop situation (go figure).
front load washing machines add around 100 lbs of weight to the bottom.... not just to piss off the delivery guy, but to help balance the offset spinning load.
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forget the weight. Beats headphones will slowly turn you deaf because they emphasize so much on the low frequency waves which no human can hear. A cheap and ridiculously overpriced piece of plastic.
I once heard a tale from a supposed engineer at Jaguar in England. When they were at the final stages of testing the XJ (circa 2006), they realised that when travelling at high speed on American concrete roads, the joints in the road surface were causing the car to lose control due to uneven weight distribution. After frantic last minute meetings trying to find a solution to the problem, they determined that they were too far along in the design process and the only viable option was to place 2 huge weights in the trunk at each side of the car. Not great for fuel consumption, but at least you kept your life.
I'd actually heard about guys with overpowered American muscle cars riding around with a trunk full of cinder blocks to get more traction to the rear wheels. I always thought they were nuts as if you get into a head-on collision, there's you hitting the barrier, then the cinder blocks coming right up behind you.
British Telecom regularly added lead to their receiver handsets... it was to give a feeling of quality.
I took apart an old Gillette Sensor (?) men's razor, and inside the handle was something like a AAA battery-sized weight, a little smaller than that actually. This was circa 1998. Maybe it needed it for counterbalance and heft, but it didn't serve any other apparent external function.
Sean, I hear you, but I can't call that a design success; it's certainly a marketing success. But I instinctively dislike it when a product becomes a success due, in part, to fooling the consumer. I hate to think that we're all that dumb.
I agree that its not what Dieter Rams would do, or maybe what the current ethos of craft/locavore/artisan/authentic would prescribe. And the visibility and marketing were very good - the ad 'war' between Krapernick and Sherman especially. But as crappy/plasticky as the headphones might be, I can't see the design as anything other than a home run. Yes, most of us are that dumb. Consumers want/need the 'down-road-graphic' or 10' read of the 'b' logo. Other headphones don't have that statement. Some DJ cans do. I'm sure the designers would have done an amazing job if they had $70 to play with instead of...whatever that stack of plastic costs. But that would eat into the dollars they paid out in sponsorships.
While seemingly less shifty, when I was working for a large contract furniture company we used to put a 100-lb slab of steel (maybe it was cast iron) in the bottom of our file cabinets. This was a big point of differentiation over the competition because the weighted bottom obviously makes it more stable when the drawers were opened all the way.
That I can see, and that makes total sense. I've almost tipped over my own file cabinets a couple of times. If it was an infomercial I'd have turned to the fourth wall and said "There's got to be a better way!" and you would have walked on-camera holding the steel slab.