Music

An engineer discovered that Beats headphones are made of $16 worth of parts

by Richard Howard

Ahoy there! My name is Captain Obvious and I’m here to let you in on a little secret: The things you buy cost considerably less than what you pay for them.

Honestly – we’re fine with that. Capitalism free market Warren Buffet blah blah blah, we get it. Of course, sometimes the markup can be a bit much and feel like the equivalent of a school bully smashing your own palm into your face and telling you to ‘stop slapping yourself.’ According to one engineer, Beats By Dre may fall into that category: he contends that a $200 pair of Beats headphones were constructed from $16 of parts.

Engineer Avery Louie over at Bolt blog decided to tear down a pair of Beats by Dre Solo HD headphones for his ‘How it’s Made’ series, curious to find out whether there was a solid engineering or component justification for the headphones’ $199 price tag. Short answer – there wasn’t.

As expected with any mass produced product, cost saving steps such as generous usage of injection molded plastic and snaps or glue instead of screws were taken. However, there were definitely some discoveries that got the ol’ eyebrows moving upwards. For instance, those ‘expertly tuned precision drivers’? Generic off the shelf units. Also, that solid, heavy feel that promises sturdy metal construction? That would almost exclusively be from the hinge/adjustment parts. 

To be fair, this model is very dated and Beats are generally accepted to have improved greatly from their Monster years. There have also been claims that the headphones in questions were knock-offs. However, the comparison was made with far newer versions so that’s still up in the air. And of course, there’s labor and R&D. However, from what we’re seeing here (and in many folks’ opinion, what you hear out of those things) this might be the greatest cash grab since Nike Air Max.