Paying for the name – Louis Vuitton’s Horizon earbuds will set you back R13,750

Much of the stuff that we examine here at Stuff is very, very expensive. But there’s usually a reason for the price. An R80,000 computer? Apple’s newest hardware? Those’ll cost you but you’re generally getting what you’re paying for. But if you’re in the market for some brand-name headphones, you might want to think twice about paying R13,750 for these Louis Vuitton Horizon earbuds. Why? Because they’re R13,750.

At this point you might be asking: So what? Isn’t that what luxury brands do? Make seemingly normal things that cost large amount of money. Well… yeah, we guess so. It’s what wiped Vertu out, if memory (and the internet) serves.

But usually those brands are not simply popping their logo on what looks to be an already existing product. The Louis Vuitton Horizon buds seem to be an exact (internal) match for Master and Dynamic’s MW07 buds. Hardly surprising, since the American audio company is teaming up with the French fashion house for their first set of ‘phones. The price of the MW07 buds, though? Just $300 (R4,150), or about what we’d expect from a high-end set of truly wireless earbuds.

The other $700 (close to R10k) or so for the Horizon? That’s apparently for the logo, because as several news reports have pointed out, the MW07s and the Horizon buds share the same custom drivers and playback specs, so the batteries are probably the same. The differences? The letters LV and a different version of the charging case. Still, if you absolutely must have them, they will launch in four different colours and should work with the (also hugely expensive) Louis Vuitton Tambour Horizon smartwatch.

Source: High Snobiety via Engadget