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US basketball star LeBron James has long been part of Beats’ history, during which time he’s also been known to leak upcoming products – and it looks like he may have done it again. The NBA legend was captured with what appears to be a brand new and unreleased Bluetooth speaker in a reel posted to Instagram (see below) by the LA Lakers. In it, you can clearly see the Pill-shaped speaker has a Beats logo – and it’s on a lanyard, which is something the most recent Beats Pill speaker didn’t have.
The Beats Pill Plus was killed off in January 2022, but it wouldn’t be up for consideration as one of the best Bluetooth speakers if it were still being sold today. It dated back to Apple‘s acquisition of Beats – it was the first Beats speaker to come with a Lightning port, which was Apple’s connector of choice at the time – and was considered by many to be overpriced at launch in 2015, never mind years later when Apple finally stopped selling it.
What we’d like to see in a new Beats Pill speaker
The Beats Pill Plus had a decent 12-hour battery life, but modern models go much better. One of our current picks, the Tribit Stormbox Flow, is good for 30 hours. But that’s not the biggest bit of the Beats speaker we’d expect to be upgraded. The Bluetooth of 2015 wasn’t a patch on the Bluetooth of today, and the best such speakers now deliver vastly improved sound quality through the use of newer, better codecs.
One of the best illustrations of how Bluetooth speakers have changed is when you compare our current favorite, the Sonos Roam, with the most recent Beats. The price is the same, because Sonos is another more premium brand. But that has up-to-date Bluetooth, Wi-Fi for even better streaming, multi-room audio support, Google Assistant and Alexa. It automatically switches between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, it has automatic room tuning and it sounds fantastic.
And that’s a model that’s about to be replaced: we’re expecting to see the Sonos Roam 2 this summer with even better Bluetooth and improved voice control. That’s likely to arrive this June – so for a new Beats to be a Sonos killer it needs to be something as awe-inspiring the legend currently carrying it. We’ll find out soon enough, because if this is indeed a bit of celebrity product placement then the actual product launch can’t be too far away.
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