UPDATE! How it’s made series: Beats by Dre #MusicMonday #Manufacturing
Avery Louie from Bolt has a great series on Medium called “How It’s Made” and the latest post is a teardown of Beats by Dre headphones.
It’s nearly impossible to be on a train, fly on a plane or walk down the street without spotting the iconic “b” logo. Beats has been extremely successful in marketing its headphones and now enjoys large market appeal. But with a sky-high retail price of $199, is there more to Beats than meets the eye?
Lots of optimizations are to be expected in a product manufactured in the millions of units: snaps and glue are used for assembly rather than screws (which require lots of human manipulation) and almost every part is injection molded plastic (which is essentially free at high volumes).
Anytime I take a product apart there are a few exciting surprises to solve some tricky problems. Here’s what I found for Beats:
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