Beats By Dr. Dre, the company best known for headphones, is adding to its portable music options. The Pill portable speaker connects to your portable device and computer via Bluetooth and auxiliary cable. (Photo: Beats By Dr. Dre)
Story Highlights
- The Pill is a portable, Bluetooth-friendly speaker for work and play
- New Executive headphones have look to suit the business traveler
- 50 Cent expands his SMS Audio headphone lineup
1:22PM EDT October 16. 2012 - Beats By Dr. Dre has what it is calling the cure for the portable music blues.
The company's new portable speaker, the Pill ($199, out now), claims to outpower and outperform other portable speakers, such as Jawbone's popular Jambox.
The Pill helps fill a product category that falls between Beats' ever-growing line of headphones and its portable Beatbox systems ($400, www.beatsbydre.com). "We really saw demand for a hyper-portable small-footprint speaker (with) quality sound," says Beats' President and COO Luke Wood.
Beats designed the Pill with four speaker drivers — twice those found in most competing products — and a 12-watt digital amplifier that doubles the competition's power output, he says. Add in Beats' own digital signal processor and "the end result, we think, is an incredible-sounding box," Wood says. "We really tried to put as many ingredients into the product that articulate our feelings and thoughts around sound."
Weighing in at less than 0.75 pounds, the Pill can be synced to Bluetooth smartphones and devices and connect to computers and other devices via an auxiliary cable. A built-in microphone lets you use the Pill for answering phone calls and conducting teleconferences.
"Once you listen to it, it becomes that perfect emotional travel partner for sound," Wood says, "for music, watching a movie, gaming, you name it."
Beats isn't standing pat on the headphone front. Also out this week is the Executive headphone ($299), a noise-canceling headset. Its aluminum, gray and black color scheme targets the business traveler.
That customer might have had the feeling that Beats headphones were "for their sons and daughters (and) wasn't their product," Wood says. "We think great sound should be for everybody. More importantly, that older consumer actually has some muscle memory to remember when audio was important."
Producer-rapper Dr. Dre co-founded Beats Electronics five years ago with Interscope Records CEO Jimmy Iovine.
Latest from 50 Cent now available
Recording artist 50 Cent recently expanded his own wired headphone product line, adding to the first wave that hit earlier this year with high-end wireless and wired over-ear headphones ($250-$400).
Now available are on-ear Street by 50, a set of wired on-ear headphones ($179.95, www.smsaudio.com) in black and white versions, and the larger over-ear DJ Pro Performance headphones ($299.95), available in black and gray. Both light-but-sturdy sets hinge for easy packing.
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