Beats ditches the Powerbeats, Beats Solo Pro, and Beats EP as Fit Pro earbuds arrive

Beats Solo Pro
Beats Solo Pro (Image credit: Beats)

What you need to know

  • Beats has discontinued the Powerbeats, Beats Solo Pro, and Beats EP products.
  • The news comes on the same day the company announced the new Fit Pro earbuds.

Apple-owned Beats has now discontinued three products as it looks to do away with some of the cruft that makes up its unwieldy lineup. As part of the move, the Powerbeats, Beats Solo Pro, and Beats EP products have been removed from sale. The move comes on the same day that Beats also announced a new pair of earbuds in the form of the Beats Fit Pro.

The culling of the herd, spotted first by MacMagazine, means that while still lengthy, the Beats list of products is now more manageable than it once was. Trying to access URLs that previously took buyers to Apple Store pages for the products now redirects to a list of all Beats products.

Of the three products killed today the Beats EP were the ones living on borrowed time. First introduced in 2016, the headphones did not feature any smart functionality nor active noise cancelation and even sported the now-defunct 3.5mm headphone jack.

Powerbeats 4

Powerbeats 4 (Image credit: Beats)

The Beats Solo Pro arrived in 2019 and offered a Lightning port by way of wired connectivity, while the Powerbeats were announced last year and replaced the Powerbeats3. The two wireless earbuds weren't entirely wireless — a cable connected them to each other — and now appear very old school beside the likes of AirPods, AirPods Pro, and the new Beats Fit Pro.

The Beats products also sit alongside Apple's own AirPods and AirPods Pro, not to mention AirPods Max. That's a lot of headphones already competing for just the one set of ears and it appears Apple and Beats decided that at least three models could go. Now we wait to see if there are more losses on the horizon.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.