Apple's Rumored Powerbeats4 Receive FCC Approval

[UltimaKilo]

I used to have Powerbeats 3 and these were hands down the worst headphones I have ever owned. They were great when they were functioning, but this didn't happen too often as they were super prone to sweat (sic!!!). It was really pathetic as I had mine replaced twice and both times ended up with the same issue, so finally decided to sell the last pair directly after I got it. After all this I saw that the review page of Powerbeats 3 on Apple website was (not anymore, Apple deleted all the comments when it modified color options of PB3...) full of outraged customers with the same issues which means that my case was not isolated and Apple just produced a lousy product and didn't really bother improving it over its lifetime. For headphones this expensive it is unacceptable. So, after this adventure I parted ways with Apple-made headphones and I'm not coming back for sure, but I do hope they managed to improve the design with these new ones.

I don’t know what you were doing to them, or if it was just bad luck. As mentioned above, been inning with mine for years now, never an issue. Likewise, tons of people on this thread have had great experience. They are, by far, the best running and exercise headphones out there.

 

[LotusLord]

I was reinforcing your comment on what the salesdrone said. Yes, the PBPros are really sketchy. The lack of any control on when they connect to something is so ridiculous, and underdone. I was hoping that the APP handled being in the case better than the PBP do. Apparently they do. It's inexcusable, to me, that they didn't THINK about the PBP enough to have a software switch to shutoff the Bluetooth connection system when it's in the case. It seems so simple, I can't believe they shipped with that flaw. It's really getting to me. How 'basic' is the idea that the dang things should only connect to a source when they are able to be actually used.

I should have bought the APP's instead of another pair of the PBP's. *sigh*

I wonder if it's something that could be fixed in firmware.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

I wonder if it's something that could be fixed in firmware.

I would have thought that they would have been aware of the issue by now, and tried to fix it. So far, nothing... AFAIK...

 

[_karrol]

I don’t know what you were doing to them, or if it was just bad luck. As mentioned above, been inning with mine for years now, never an issue. Likewise, tons of people on this thread have had great experience. They are, by far, the best running and exercise headphones out there.

The last sentence is your personal opinion only. What can I tell you about what I did with these headphones... well... I worked out with them? I sweat quite a lot during workouts and this especially in the summer. And as I said, before Apple disabled reviews on its website, they were averaging at around 2.5/5 out of well over a hundred of reviews, with many customers experiencing similar issues. Great that your pair was so reliable, but mine turned out way worse, so I am definitely not coming back.

 

[CarlJ]

The last sentence is your personal opinion only. What can I tell you about what I did with these headphones... well... I worked out with them? I sweat quite a lot during workouts and this especially in the summer. And as I said, before Apple disabled reviews on its website, they were averaging at around 2.5/5 out of well over a hundred of reviews, with many customers experiencing similar issues. Great that your pair was so reliable, but mine turned out way worse, so I am definitely not coming back.

Not to take away from your point, but just to address one thing: I got the distinct impression (and maybe Apple did too, and maybe that’s why they shut off the reviews) that people didn’t go to Apple‘s website to review in general, they mostly went to complain when something didn’t work. Every time I looked at reviews there, they seemed considerably skewed from reviews on, say, Amazon (for random 3rd party things Apple sells, not just Apple products) - on Amazon you’d get fairly balanced reviews for something, mostly favorable, a few problems, but if you’d look up the same thing on Apple’s site, it'd have terrible reviews with only problems and seemingly no one happy.

 

[_karrol]

Not to take away from your point, but just to address one thing: I got the distinct impression (and maybe Apple did too, and maybe that’s why they shut off the reviews) that people didn’t go to Apple‘s website to review in general, they mostly went to complain when something didn’t work. Every time I looked at reviews there, they seemed considerably skewed from reviews on, say, Amazon (for random 3rd party things Apple sells, not just Apple products) - on Amazon you’d get fairly balanced reviews for something, mostly favorable, a few problems, but if you’d look up the same thing on Apple’s site, it'd have terrible reviews with only problems and seemingly no one happy.

This i can agree with (to a certain extent), for sure! On the other hand, my experience with Amazon reviews is that lots of people post their 'reviews' almost immediately after receiving a product, before they really had time to try it out in various scenarios or before something even had time to go wrong. So anyways, we can agree that the reviews will always be a very subjective source of information about a product and mainly they will average between those posted by very satisfied and very disappointed customers.

 

[CarlJ]

This i can agree with (to a certain extent), for sure! On the other hand, my experience with Amazon reviews is that lots of people post their 'reviews' almost immediately after receiving a product, before they really had time to try it out in various scenarios or before something even has time to go wrong. So anyways, we can agree that the reviews will always be a very subjective source of information about a product and mainly they will average between those posted by very satisfied and very disappointed customers.

True. Amazon gets a considerable number of "I just unboxed this and it's fantastic" reviews as well as self-congratulatory "I am so smart for having bought this" reviews. And Amazon also has the problem sometimes, of astroturfed reviews (sometimes outright purchased by the manufacturer/seller - running things through fakespot can occasionally be enlightening).

To my mind, Amazon has... more of a sense of community, I suppose - it gets so much traffic that it feels like people are more persuaded to contribute reviews - people will read dozens of positive reviews before buying something, and then feel more inclined to join the chorus. I never got this sense with Apple's reviews. It felt like there wasn't quite the groundswell of enthusiasm for reviewing there. But that's just how it feels to me, I may be missing things.

(As an aside, I am continually mystified by answers in the Q&A section on Amazon products where practically any question is likely to have at least one answer along the lines of, "I don't know, it was a gift for my grandson" - WTF? Why are you going to the effort of submitting an answer that says you don't have an answer? Who do you think this is helping? You're wasting your time as well as everybody else's! - I often go out of my way to mark those answers as "unhelpful" in the hopes that the actual answers will rise up higher. It makes me wonder if they're possibly getting email from Amazon asking the question at hand and they feel obliged to answer, perhaps just replying to some automated email system that then posts it, but I've never gotten email like that.)