Apple (AAPL.US) introduces new sports headphones with heart rate monitoring and noise cancellation features.

Apple's (AAPL.US) Beats brand has launched the Powerbeats Pro 2, a highly anticipated update to the fitness-focused earbuds that brings noise cancellation, heart rate monitoring, and design improvements. The Powerbeats Pro 2 is Apple's first earbuds to include heart rate monitoring, marking its further expansion in the health sector. The Powerbeats Pro 2 is equipped with Apple's H2 chip to process the generated data, delivering up to 10 hours of battery life per earbud and up to 45 hours with the charging case. Thanks to the H2 chip, the Powerbeats Pro 2 also features some other practical functions, such as adaptive equalizer, active noise cancellation (ANC), and transparency mode. To provide the best possible sound quality during calls, Apple has installed the same three-microphone design found in the AirPods Pro 2 in each earbud. In addition, the earbuds can be controlled not only through voice commands but also through hardware buttons. The Powerbeats Pro 2 has also been updated in design, not only improving its ear hooks to fit better but also shrinking the earbud shell by 20% to make the product more compact and discreet. The Powerbeats Pro 2 is IPX4 certified, so it should be able to withstand sweat and water splashes. The earbuds will officially hit stores on Thursday, with the US official price set at $249, the same as its predecessor. The earbuds can also be paired with Android devices, but the number of features will be reduced compared to Apple users. The market expects that the Powerbeats Pro 2 will help drive revenue growth for Apple's Wearables, which saw its revenue decline from $11.9 billion in the year-ago quarter to $11.7 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2024, as Apple reported earlier.