Hot on the heels of the AirPods 3, Apple is on the verge of releasing a new pair of Beats wireless earbuds.
According to a report by 9to5Mac, the Beats Fit Pro will launch in the week commencing November 1 with active noise cancellation and Apple's H1 chip for fast pairing with the company's devices and the 'Hey Siri' feature.
Right now, there's no indication of how much they might cost, but the inclusion of the H1 chip and all the extra features that could bring means we'd expect them to cost a little more than the $149.99 / £129.99 / AU$199.95 Beats Studio Buds.
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The report says that the Beats Fit Pro will come with six hours of battery life onboard when you have ANC or Transparency mode turned on - that figure will rise to seven hours if you just have Adaptive EQ activated.
Combined with the charging case, the new true wireless earbuds will apparently deliver between 27 and 30 hours of battery life - which is around the same as the new AirPods (3rd generation).
9to5Mac also says that the Beats Fit Pro will have Class 1 Bluetooth, which should mean a wireless range of 130 – 330 feet, as well as built-in accelerometers to "identify and reduce external noise when using the microphones". Presumably, this accelerometer will be able to measure gusts of wind, allowing to earbuds to adjust the sound of your voice accordingly when you're making phone calls.
Accelerometers could also have some useful fitness applications, perhaps allowing the earbuds to measure your performance during workouts - we're guessing from the name that the Beats Fit Pro will be marketed as running headphones.
Another clue that the Beats Fit Pro will be geared towards exercise is their design. 9to5Mac shared some images of the rumored in-ear headphones in black, gray, purple, and white, and they certainly look sports-friendly.
Like the Beats Studio Buds, the Fit Pro look very compact - but unlike their predecessors, they feature small wingtips, which should keep them securely in your ears during vigorous workouts.
We'd expect to see an IPX4 water resistance rating or higher from a pair of fitness-focused buds, as with the Studio Buds and the Powerbeats Pro.
Analysis: are the Beats Fit Pro the fitness buds we've been waiting for?
When Apple announced the AirPods 3 at its recent Unleashed event, we were pleased to see that the popular true wireless earbuds have been given lots of upgrades like Spatial Audio support and a longer battery life.
However, we'd been hearing rumors that the new AirPods would come with a host of fitness features - and they never materialized.
Among the fitness features we thought we’d see on AirPods 3 were ambient light sensors that could make them much more useful as health monitoring devices. With light sensors installed, you might’ve been able to monitor more health aspects like heart rate, which has so far been limited to the Apple Watch.
A previous Apple patent also described AirPods that use inbuilt sensors to "gather orientation information such as accelerometer measurements during user movements".
The true wireless earbuds could then communicate via Bluetooth with an iPhone, and "may form part of an AirPods system that supplies the user with coaching and feedback while evaluating user performance of a head movement routine or other exercise routine".
This could be particularly useful for exercises like yoga, with the AirPods providing real time feedback on a user's head tilts, poses, and stretches - and if the Beats Fit Pro do have accelerometers as 9to5Mac claims, they could be the earbuds to get these features.
That would certainly give them an edge over other workout headphones, and integration with Apple Fitness Plus could make for a really well-rounded experience.
For now, we'll have to wait and see whether the Beats Fit Pro are announced in the coming weeks - it's always worth taking these rumors with a pinch of salt, but with so much information available, we think an imminent release is pretty likely.
