Apple's exquisitely affordable Beats Solo Buds are finally up for grabs and shipping across the US
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Formally unveiled alongside the on-ear Beats Solo 4 headphones back in April but for some reason not commercially released shortly thereafter, the tiny and yet purportedly very powerful in-ear Beats Solo Buds are now up for sale stateside at long last.
Following this inexplicably lengthy wait, Apple does deserve some praise for keeping pre-orders short and sweet this week and allowing pretty much all major US retailers to start shipping the ultra-affordable Solo Buds in three color options right away.
Whether you're looking to pay your $79.99 at Amazon or Best Buy, you can choose from Transparent Red, Matte Black, and Storm Gray paint jobs, with the first of those three flavors being by far the most flamboyant and the one most capable of setting the Beats Solo Buds apart from most of the best wireless earbuds on the market today.
Of course, this is not the first time Apple is going the "transparent" earbuds design route, but compared to the even more eye-catching and more see-through Beats Studio Buds Plus, the Solo Buds are a lot cheaper, and naturally, significantly humbler too.
No, we're afraid you're not going to get state-of-the-art active noise cancellation or (under-the-hood) Transparency functionality for your 80 bucks, and the personalized spatial audio technology with dynamic head tracking offered by the high-end Beats Fit Pro, for instance, is clearly out of the question in the sub-$100 segment.
That being said, the Beats Solo Buds do still promise to deliver "huge sound" from their very compact body with the help of dual-layer drivers and a "fully custom" acoustic architecture, which is certainly something to look forward to. Meanwhile, the 18-hour battery life rating might be the number one selling point here given that we're talking about completely uninterrupted listening time.
That's right, these bad boys don't need to go in their case to exceed seven or eight hours of battery life, and in fact, their ultra-lightweight case is not meant to hold any extra power, but simply to help you store your brand-new earbuds when you're not using them.
Like the rest of Apple's Beats-branded portfolio and unlike the company's industry-leading AirPods, the Solo Buds are designed to work natively and seamlessly with both iPhones and Android handsets, which obviously widens their target audience, making them ideal for hundreds of millions of potential (cash-strapped) buyers around the world.
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