One of our biggest issues with the Shuffle 2k9 is, of course, that you’re locked into using proprietary headphones. If you insist on getting one of these silly things, do yourself a favor and at least spring for a better pair of earbuds; of course, at that point you’ll be spending close to $100, and you may as well buy a Nano or baby Zune. But I digress. Soon lots of headphone manufacturers will be putting out Shuffle-compatible cans. None are available yet, but they have been announced.
Etymotic will be putting out some high quality ones — they seem to think the Shuffle is specially capacious and will hold “an impressive amount of uncompressed music.” I’d like some of what he’s smoking. The headphones will probably be nice, though.
Monster will be updating its Beats and Turbine lines among others to include Shuffle controls. Nothing to make fun of there.
V-MODA will be dropping a Shuffle-compatible headphone line that, if I’m to believe their press release, is nothing short of revolutionary. Their words.
Scosche will have a pair of their own as well or you can get an inline adapter for normal headphones, which seems the best solution to me.
Klipsch has some as well. As if you didn’t know!
We’ve contacted Ultimate Ears to see what their plans are, but haven’t heard back yet.
As I mentioned, there’s hardly any more info out there other than “yeah, we’re making some,” so we’ll get you the news and reviews you want as soon as the gear is available. In the meantime, we also advise against getting the new Shuffle, since it sucks.