This week Beats made a surprise announcement with the launch of the new Beats Pill+ which replaces the existing Pill which was originally introduced back in 2012, which is iPhone 5 and iPad mini days. Beats hasn’t launched any new hardware or updates in a while, earlier in the year in May, the company launched the new Solo 2 Wireless in Space Grey, Silver and Golf as well as the new PowerBeats 2. Also in the past few weeks, Beats launched new colour options for the range of headphones in new Active hues.

The Beats Pill+ is the first brand new product since Apple acquired the company last summer, the speaker is slightly larger than the old Pill but obviously not as large as the Beats Pill XL – which was actually discontinued not long ago.

The design of the new Pill+ makes it look very stylish and also very Apple like, it’s more restrained than previous designs from Beats with a light grey logo on the white model and a while logo on the black version. The actual shape is less pill like with the middle a flat surface which makes the buttons easier to use. One thing that will please a lot of audiophiles is that the sound of the new Beats Pill+ is now a lot better thanks to some new technology and design. The Pill+ now has two-way crossover and two woofers and two tweeters for a more balanced sound across the bass and treble and also with different types of music, not just Hip-hop which is what Beats speakers of old were best suited to. But the speaker hasnt lost is ability to push out some serous bass, not losing the iconic Beats sound.

In terms of ports the Pill+ has a USB for charging up your phone, a line in for non-Bluetooth devices and a Lighting port for charging the speaker. It also has Bluetooth for audio playback.