Irked by Air Pods Max 2's 6-year-old design? Apple's cheaper Beats arm has just the thing, as new over-ears are spotted at the FIFA World Cup training camp | Tech Radar
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Irked by Air Pods Max 2's 6-year-old design? Apple's cheaper Beats arm has just the thing, as new over-ears are spotted at the FIFA World Cup training camp
Apple is putting its Beats brand center stage — so is this the Solo 5?
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New Beats headphones spotted in the wild, on soccer star Lamine Yamal
They seem to show more interesting design changes than Air Pods Max 2
It's not the first celeb headphone leak we've seen recently, either
It's been a minute since we've seen new Beats over-ear headphones — actually two years since the Beats Solo 4 released (pictured above), and three since the Beats Studio Pro — but it looks like the Apple sub-brand is finally ready to adorn our ears.
New Beats headphones have been pictured in the wild, and they look like they could be the Beats Solo 5 given their lack of resemblance to the Studio Pro (although to me, they look a fair bit like the CMF Headphone Pro).
Where have they been pictured? In an odd place: on the head (and gracing the bag) of FC Barelona soccer player Lamine Yamal, in a series of Instagram pictures taken to celebrate his checking into the Spanish soccer team's training camp for the 2026 World Cup.
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The new Beats headphones are given pride of place in some of the pictures; they're hard to miss. We can see them in enough detail to easily tell they're not the existing options from the company (and would you really put them around your bag like that, if a company hadn't specifically asked you to show them off?).
Handing headphones to celebrities seems to be the promotional strategy of choice these days. Shortly before the release of Sony 1000X The Collexion, British actor Damson Idris was thoroughly photographed wearing them on the streets of New York City, and it looked no less fabricated than Yamal's photoshoot.
Will endorsement from a soccer star really sell the Beats Solo 5 to audiophiles? I doubt it, but it doesn't matter; as Apple's cheaper headphone brand, Beats isn't aiming for audiophiles anyway.
We recently tested the Apple Air Pods Max 2, which saw no design changes whatsoever from the original Air Pods Max, originally released in 2020. So it's a six-year-old design, and once that looked a little dated even then.
People irked that Apple hadn't updated its looks will probably be happy that the new Beats headphones offer a more refined design than the older models. I guess that's what all of Apple's designers were beavering away on.
Judging by the pictures, the Beats Solo 5 (if that's what they are) have a more curvy design than the Solo 4, with no rigid plastic tiers and, by the looks of it, a mesh headband akin to the Air Pods Max. I wasn't being hyperbolic when I compared them to the playful CMF headphones.
Now, non-sports fans might not know this, but Yamal isn't alone at the Spanish training camp in Chattanooga, or in the United States. There are actually a fair few footballers across 48 teams, and there's a good chance we'll see more of them tote these new Beats cans across the event.
If that's the case, then the World Cup could be the big pre-launch for the new Beats headphones, building awareness before they're officially shown off. It seems very likely, then, that we could see an official launch relatively soon.
➡️ Read our full guide to the best noise cancelling headphones
- Best overall: Sony WH-1000XM6
- Best mid-range: Bose Quiet Comfort Headphones
- Best under $100/£100: 1 More Sonoflow Pro HQ51
- Best under $60/£50: Soundcore Q30
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Tom Bedford is a freelance contributor covering tech, entertainment and gaming. Beyond Tech Radar, he has bylines on sites including Games Radar, Digital Trends, Android Police, Tech Advisor, Whatto Watch and BGR. From 2019 to 2022 he was on the Tech Radar team as the staff writer and then deputy editor for the mobile team.
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