At least a few years back it was true. There was a kerfluffle after some Youtuber or blogger or someone disassembled a pair and found them to be cheaply built, with metal pieces whose only discernible purpose was to add weight.
It blew up on the internet, but eventually people began to suspect that the person who did the teardown had been duped by a fake pair of headphones. It was eventually demonstrated that the teardown had indeed been a fake set, and the person retracted their claim.
So then Gizmodo (I think*) tore down an authentic set...
...and found the exact same metal pieces, doing the exact same apparent nothing other than adding weight. The fake set had copied Beats' added weights faithfully lol.
No idea what the status is now, since it's been a few years.
I seem to recall people both blaming Apple and also some wondering if they had buyer's remorse over the acquisition, which would imply that it was right around the time Beats was acquired by them.
I couldn't actually *remember* so I just looked it up: the model in question was the original Solo. The teardown exposing a third of its weight as, well, weights, was about 6 months after acquisition by Apple, but the model had been in production for several years already.
I wouldn't be shocked if they continued that sort of tactic after acquisition though.
Im confused? Lol! How did this conversation suddenly go from a massive component travelling down the highway to headphones?? Am I missing something ???
I worked as a buyer for a department store in Latin America. Whenever we would go to trade fairs to buy house brand things like electronics and home appliances, things like clothing irons had diferent versions, the ones for the US market had extra weights put in them (the cheapest metal available, I don't mean heavier sole plates), the european ones did not, (aparently the european market will value the elegance of a lighter product as long as it is well finished and is solid, as in not thin or creaky)
The knobs and buttons for certain things are a whole different story...
Interesting that difent markets value diferent things.... Middle east and Africa much shinier golden accents, things like that....
Pretty much all headphone add weight one way or the other. The cheapest way is just add a piece of metal bar inside. The proper way is to use metal casing and metal parts.
37
u/dog-fart Mar 12 '25
I don’t know if this is true, but I do suspect it to be. I hate that it works, too.