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iFixit Teardown Reveals Apple's New AirPods Are 'Disappointingly Disposable' (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the surprise-surprise dept.

After tearing apart Apple's new second-generation AirPods, the repair guide site found that there is no practical way to service or repair them even at a professional shop. They labeled them as "disappointingly disposable." Ars Technica reports: iFixit had to go to almost comical lengths to open the AirPods up, and despite their expertise and tools, the iFixit team was unable to do so without permanently damaging the product. [...] That's disappointing, given that the batteries in the AirPods won't last longer than a few years with heavy use, and they're hard to recycle. Apple does offer to recycle headphones through partners as part of its Apple GiveBack program, but the GiveBack Web portal does not offer a product-specific category for AirPods to consumers like it does with most other Apple products. Consumers may simply select a general "headphones & speakers" category on the site.

The teardown also revealed some differences from the first-generation AirPods. The battery is the same size, but iFixit identified the new, Bluetooth 5-ready H1 chip in the earbuds themselves. The site also found some small differences likely related to Apple's efforts to increase the case's water resistance. For all the details, visit iFixit's teardown page for the product. All told, iFixit gave the AirPods a 0 out of 10 for repairability -- that's low even for Apple products. By contrast, the site also opened up Samsung's Galaxy Buds and gave them a 6 out of 10.

10 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Who the heck wants to fix AirPods? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Do you fix burned-out light bulbs, too? At some point, the subsystem is the component.

    1. Re:Who the heck wants to fix AirPods? by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They cost $159USD. That's different than a lightbulb by two orders of magnitude.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  2. Not a problem by registrations_suck · · Score: 1, Insightful

    They are what, $160? Assuming you use for 2 years, that is under $7/month. I am not inclined to cry about replacing them after that 24th month.

    I agree with previous poster. They are disposable - who cares?

    1. Re: Not a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The environment you shmuck.

    2. Re:Not a problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why would you subject yourself to substandard sound from a substandard product all for the hipstery of it, while you can get cabled studio quality in-ear Etymotics for 75% of that, and those are going to last you much longer?
      And why pollute the planet with disposal and destroy countless lives and habitats by strip mining and tossing out rare earth elements? I am striving to live this planet a better place for all life, not live balls to the wall, come hell or high water like you do.

    3. Re:Not a problem by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They're $160. If you could buy a $20 set of batteries and keep them for 4 years, they'd be $3.75 per month. The battery is inside the "tail" of the Airpods -- it would be trivial to allow it to be replaced via an end cap that unscrews. Easy to seal against water, too.

  3. Disposable brings recurring revenue by misnohmer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This is by design. Making serviceable goods yields very little revenue, especially with "right to repair" laws coming to public focus lately. Apple ran out of innovation, so now they have to survive selling services and disposable accessories - earpods, headphone adapters, charging cables. Why do you think Apple makes everything proprietary? Because even charging cables break and are disposable and Apple doesn't want to miss out on the recurring revenue. I don't use Apple products, but my family does, and they go through cables and adapters at a fairly steady rate (they stop working, not lost).

  4. What a waste of money! by Iwastheone · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did IQs suddenly drop while I was away? You could feed a family of four with what these cost. When they stop working you just throw them out?! I have a few decent $8 earbuds from over 5 years ago that still work and sound perfect to this day. In my opinion, they make people look ridiculous, at least Spock and Uhura's earpieces looked better on them than these things. I weep for the future.

  5. products like this.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    should NOT be on the market. unless the manufacturer provides repair service at a reasonable cost for a reasonable amount of time (10 years, i'd say for these, or more, would be an expected lifespan if the batteries were serviceable) and pays into a fund that guarantees the buy-back of them for recycling and further provides for other environmental efforts.

  6. Where does it stop? by kiwioddBall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Repairability has to stop somewhere.

    I mean, say your CPU fails tests. Are you expected to be able to replace individual transistors in your CPU to repair it - clearly not, they are microscopic. It can't be done because that is the way the technology is manufactured.

    So where do you draw the line - it appears the line is somewhere between full sized headphones which can be repaired, and airpods which are probably manufactured by machines and a human never goes near them in the manufacturing process.