Beat-up by Beats
Warning: long rant ahead.
A little background: Tommy, my oldest son, wanted “Beats HD” headphones for his Birthday back in October. We being the nice parents decided to get them. My first mistake was getting them at WalMart instead of my usual B&M choice of BestBuy for that type of thing. I would have ordered them online, but I put it off too long.
The “Beats HD”s are the over-the-ear type, and one step down from the most expensive models at only $200. I purchased the extended service plan for $9 since they were certainly going to see some abuse.
After about 5 weeks, one of the drivers went out. We took them back to Walmart, and read the return terms posted on the wall behind the customer service counter and found that we could just exchange them since it was within the specified time frame (60 or 90 days, can’t remember). He decided that he wanted to go with the in-ear model instead, and got the “iBeats”, which were half the price ($100) – fine, whatever.
Shortly into owning the “iBeats”, the newest model came out – the “urbeats”. Not sure what the difference is aside from the fact that they are no longer made by Monster apparently. Back we go with receipts in hand and are able to do another exchange, along with a service plan. This time we were told by the customer service person at the big W, that since we’d already done one exchange, and had the exchange receipt with us, not the original, we’d need to find the original if we needed to exchange them again. This didn’t worry me since I’d purchased the 2 year service plans from the start.
A few weeks into owning the “urbeats”, the wire going from the mic/volume pod to the right headphone popped out. Back we go. This time, the big yellow smiley face wasn’t smiling upon us. The customer service person explained to use that there was only a 15-day exchange period (while standing in front of the giant sign that contradicted what she was saying). I also explained that I had the service plan, to which she replied that that doesn’t start until the manufacturer’s warranty stops, which made no sense whatsoever. The little folder you get with the service plan boldly and brightly says “Coverage from Day 1”.
From the website:
I registered the latest ear buds and will have to file a claim of some sort, we’ll see how that works out. I’m sure that will be the subject for a future post.
To summarize:
- Don’t buy anything from WalMart that you would normally get from BestBuy or Amazon (still can’t remember why I went there)
- Beats headphones (and probably probably most other “Celebrity” headphones), in my opinion, are over-priced, over-hyped pieces of electronic poo. I know most of the Beats were made by Monster, so you end up paying probably an 80% mark-up for lower-end Monsters. I know it’s hard to talk a kid out of what’s cool, but if they really are into it for the sound quality, they could do so much better for the money. I have a pair of in-ear Altecs with cloth-covered cords that are still going strong after about 4 years of daily use, and they sound better (to me) that the in-ear Beats that we’ve had in the house. For over-the-ear, you can drop a pretty penny, but for my budget, my Skull Candy Hesh models sound better than the Beats HDs did.
- If I see another device with “Audio by Beats” listed as a selling point, I’m going to go find a dolphin and punch it in the face.
- Well played Dr. Dre, well played.
tl;dr;
Beats suck.
pete.m
this is my brain 
Well, Dear, my cute little pink iphone buds are working nicely and match my phone. Love, Mom/Grandma
You are right–those beats things are overpriced and not build to last.
So are the skull candy things–very easily broken. I like the Sony mdr-v6. You can get a set for about $90 if you shop around.
I’ve had my Skull Candy phones for a little over a year now, and they’re holding up pretty well. They don’t get daily use, i use them for recording or straight out of GarageBand or my Zoom G3, when I want as much isolation as I can get, and they were in my budget 🙂