Apple’s sweatproof Powerbeats headphones are not what they are cracked up to be, they have poor battery life and are not waterproof and a US judge is set to let consumers vent their anger in Court.
District judge Richard Seeborg said the case could go ahead but some amendments were required to the allegations that the headphone failed when in contact with sweat despite being marketed as activity wear.
Seeborg said that while the customers had not explicitly specified whether they had sweated while wearing the headphones, they did have a case in arguing the battery life of the devices was not as good as Apple had claimed in its marketing material.
At this stage information from Seven customers, from various US cities, who claim the Apple sold the headphones do not hold their charge for as long as Apple advertised as the informants in the case.
Apple had requested that all the claims be dismissed.
Apple promoted the Powerbeats 2 headphones in Australia via both JB Hi Fi and their own stores as having “six hours rechargeable battery” and Powerbeats 3 as having “up to 12 hour battery life”.
The seven customers all said they had owned multiple Powerbeats headphones, which had not lived up to this expectation.
One of the customers received five replacement Powerbeats 2 headphones and they all malfunctioned by “failing to charge and eventually failing to turn on”.
Christopher Bizzelle later bought a pair of Powerbeats 3 headphones but had the same problem.
He says an Apple service representative told him he believed it was a result of “sweat damaging the Powerbeats”.
The BBC claims that Powerbeats 3 currently has a 1.5 star rating from customers on the Apple store, with several complaining that sweat appears to interfere with the headphones’ ability to function.
