Untitled

I got this Beats Studio headphone for my birthday last year. It sounds great and looks cool. But I want to point out one particular characteristic in its design that is not very good. This headphone use 2 AAA bateries to power the noice-canceling amplifier. These bateries are housed on the right side of the headphone and can be access by pressure-twisting the cover. With frequent use, the batteries need to be replaced about once a month. The process of battery replacement for this headphone is what I consider a deficiency of good design for a product with a price tag of 300 USD. Sometime it take less than a minute to do the job but more often than not, it takes me more than a minute to get it done. The process fustrate me a few times. The pressure-twisting don't usually work on the first try and tend to stuck when trying to lift the cover out completely. I feared that I might break something, the black plastic headphone looks delicate.

The battery housing is very traditional, 2 recesses with spring and contact plate to hold the batteries. This design has been used for a long time. Some products use pop-out scheme to access the battery, but this works best for a single battery or for batteries that are placed top-to-bottom. This scheme won't work here with this headphone. Furthermore, pop-out battery's housing design tend to have problema with battery contact because of the battery's pressure exerting on the plastic cover. In some case, the battery will pop out by itself, especially when the object is hit or dropped.

Other alternative is to use built-in rechargeble battery. This will take care of frequent battery replacement but also called for frequent recharging. Furthermore, rechargeble battery of this kind tend to be heavier, thus the headphone would be a bit heavier. I have a wireless bluetooth headphone of this type. It has to be recharged after about 3 or 4 hours of continue use. Battery's life should now increase in newer models. Last but not least, if you use the headphone while tracking through the wilderness without an easy way to recharge it, you are out of luck.

The solution to this problem is to redesign the battery cover so it can be more easily opened without sacrifcing its purpose or its overall aesthetics. You guy in product design, get to work.

 

Posted via email from bookaman's posterous