Lawsuit over Apple's Powerbeats3 battery, sweat resistance given partial go-ahead
A U.S. judge has given the greenlight to a lawsuit against Apple over its Powerbeats2 and 3 headphones, but only if some amendments to the complaint are made.
Houston Rockets player James Harden with a pair of Powerbeats.
While the seven customers in the lawsuit do have a case that battery life wasn't as good as promised, lawyers will have to fix allegations that the headphones failed in contact with sweat despite being marketed as sweatproof, the BBC quoted District Judge Richard Seeborg as ruling. The customers hadn't explicitly said whether they had sweated while wearing the products.
The plaintiffs did say they had owned multiple sets of Powerbeats headphones, but that none of them had lived up to Apple battery estimates of 6 hours for the Powerbeats2 and 12 hours for the Powerbeats3.
Apple has explicitly marketed the Powerbeats line as sweatproof, even using athletes like LeBron James to sell them. One of the affected plaintiffs, Christopher Bizzelle, said that he went through over five replacement sets of the Powerbeats2, but that each broke within a matter of months or weeks, at some point failing to charge or turn on. An Apple representative allegedly told him that sweat was the problem, but he nevertheless bought the Powerbeats3, going through multiple replacements of that as well.
Other customers have "similar stories," including failed replacements, the ruling reads.
The Powerbeats line is Apple's only set of headphones with any level of waterproofing. AirPods, EarPods, and other Beats headphones are a common sight at gyms, but not actually meant for intense workouts.
Houston Rockets player James Harden with a pair of Powerbeats.
While the seven customers in the lawsuit do have a case that battery life wasn't as good as promised, lawyers will have to fix allegations that the headphones failed in contact with sweat despite being marketed as sweatproof, the BBC quoted District Judge Richard Seeborg as ruling. The customers hadn't explicitly said whether they had sweated while wearing the products.
The plaintiffs did say they had owned multiple sets of Powerbeats headphones, but that none of them had lived up to Apple battery estimates of 6 hours for the Powerbeats2 and 12 hours for the Powerbeats3.
Apple has explicitly marketed the Powerbeats line as sweatproof, even using athletes like LeBron James to sell them. One of the affected plaintiffs, Christopher Bizzelle, said that he went through over five replacement sets of the Powerbeats2, but that each broke within a matter of months or weeks, at some point failing to charge or turn on. An Apple representative allegedly told him that sweat was the problem, but he nevertheless bought the Powerbeats3, going through multiple replacements of that as well.
Other customers have "similar stories," including failed replacements, the ruling reads.
The Powerbeats line is Apple's only set of headphones with any level of waterproofing. AirPods, EarPods, and other Beats headphones are a common sight at gyms, but not actually meant for intense workouts.
Power Beats lawsuit by Mike Wuerthele on Scribd
Comments
I thought "sweat" was both singular and plural? As in "The customers hadn't explicitly said whether they had sweat while wearing the products."
Never mind, I looked it up. Sweated is a word, you just don't hear it used too often.
You'll love butterfly keys when it's dead silent.
Hundreds of hours of aerobic workouts, with quite a lot of sweat.
My second pair lasted 2 months before intermittently failing. As example, the volume would just turn up randomly. Now they will occasionally just not charge, but then start again. I purchased a second pair, because the first ones were being repaired and had a 10K I wanted them for.
I never had complaints about daily battery life. Usually, I would just plug them in after morning run or evening exercise. But maybe I was doing it wrong by not waiting until it was fully discharged to recharge.
I tried the AirPods, but I am part of the, supposedly, small percent of people whereby they just fall out of my ears. Well, to be fair, it kept falling out of my left ear when doing nothing and right ear when motion was involved. Trying any of the attachments to AirPods to make them stay on seems counterproductive since the attachments would need to be removed (and quickly lost) when needing to place them in the case to charge.
They go from fully charged to red to fully charged in the blink of an eye... viscious circle
They then started just turning themselves off and wouldn’t turn back on until they had dried out from sweat.
i have never heard of these products. I guess it’s because the are beats products and (fill in couldn’t give a shit here).