T3 Awards 2020: Beats Powerbeats offer awesome sound at an unbeatable price

T3 Awards 2020: Beats by Dr Dre Powerbeats are our #1 running headphones

(Image credit: Beats by Dr. Dre)

published 10 June 2020

How do you improve on the best? By making it cheaper of course. Well, it's one way of doing it, and that's what Beats by Dr Dre's Powerbeats pulled off. That's why these superb running headphones or workout buds – call them what you will – have romped to victory in the T3 Awards 2020.

As if to celebrate, Amazon has these high-calibre workout buds reduced to just £99, which is a stone cold bargain.

• Buy Beats by Dre Powerbeats for £99 at Amazon

• Read our Beats Powerbeats Pro review

Dr Dre's Beats workout headphones haven't always been the best of their range, although they've always been among their most successful, and iconic in terms of looks.

That all changed with the arrival of the Powerbeats Pro, which boasted dramatically improved sound quality and better fit than any other running headphones on the market.

Those range-topping, true wireless Powerbeats achieved an in-ear fit that was almost literally unshakeable, yet without compromising comfort.

This came at a cost, not surprisingly, but this year's Powerbeats offered a new spin on the Pro. Yes they added a wire, but that meant Beats could increase the battery life – up to 15 hours from the Pro's 9 – replace the ridiculously bulky battery case with a simple Lightening cable, and drop the price by £90/$90. The brilliant fit and stellar sound quality are exactly the same.

Best cheap headphones and buds of all kinds

Best headphones for running and gym: Beats by Dr Dre Powerbeats

It's remarkable that Beats by Dre has managed to make Powerbeats sound and look so good when you consider that they are sweatproof and rugged. The over-ear hooks that help hold them in place are remarkably comfortable and can even be worn over spectacles without any annoyance.

Yeah sure, there's now a wire involved but for that kind of saving, with that amount of extra battery life, we're sure y'all can live with that. These are the Best running headphones (a bit less) money can buy…

• See all the winners in the T3 Awards 2020

More running essentials

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years.

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."