- Fairphone’s Fairbuds have easily-replaceable batteries.
- They pack in noise-canceling, multi-point connections, and can be customized with an app.
- AirPods are like “little time bombs” for recycling plants.
It’s impossible to make something as small and feature-packed as Apple’s AirPods Pro without some sacrifices, like a fixed battery that can never be swapped, right? Right?
Fairbuds, from the Dutch maker of the super-repairable, modular Fairphone, are wireless earbuds with batteries that can be replaced in seconds, and yet still manage to pack in noise-canceling, touch controls, and more. They might not be quite as slick as Apple’s AirPods, but if they do nothing else, they prove that you don’t have to make products disposable just to make them small.
“Fairbuds show us that the rest of the electronics world can and must do better. We shouldn’t accept headphones that only last as long as the batteries sealed inside. It’s a waste of money, materials, and manufacturing,” iFixit’s director of sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain told me via direct message.
Time Bomb
I love my AirPods Pro. They’re always ready to go, they fit unnoticed in a pocket, and they sound amazing. The noise canceling makes them good for busy streets, the metro, and for blocking out noisy neighbors at bedtime. But once the batteries start to wear out, you have one choice: Throw them out and spend another $250 to replace them.
That’s obviously unsustainable, both from a financial and an environmental point of view. There may be less plastic in those AirPods than you throw into the trash after opening up a microwave dinner, but that plastic is full of contaminants and electronics, and the energy taken to manufacture and transport any gadget is a huge, often disregarded, part of a device’s overall footprint.
Removable batteries help because dead batteries are the number one reason to replace modern devices. The computer inside can keep going for years, and we already know that the speakers inside earbuds can run for decades because we all have old ‘buds in the backs of drawers somewhere. And yet, thanks to batteries that are glued into tiny enclosures that cannot be opened, the entire unit has to be trashed.
And these are just standard batteries too. “Apparently they’re LIR1054, normal ones you can buy on Aliexpress for a dime a dozen,” says tech enthusiast Nar001 in a comment on a story published by The Verge.
And it gets worse because you can’t even recycle AirPods. In fact, it might almost be irresponsible to try.
“We recently asked a room full of electronics recyclers if any of their facilities could handle AirPods, and not one of them could,” says Chamberlain. “Recyclers say that wireless earbuds with sealed-in batteries are little time bombs on their conveyor belts. If a single earbud with a sealed-in battery ends up in a shredder, the battery could ignite and burn down the whole facility. Being able to remove earbud batteries isn’t just a repair issue, it’s also critical for the safety of electronics recyclers.”
Fairpods
Fairbuds, which should definitely have been called Fairpods, roundly thrash the AirPods Pro in terms of sustainability, then. Like the Fairbuds XL (headphones) released last year, you can swap the batteries in the pods, and in the charging case almost as easily as swapping the batteries in a TV remote. You can also replace a broken earbud and the inner core and outer case of the charging case.
The Fairbuds don’t lack modern features either. They have active noise cancelation, can connect to and switch between multiple devices, and have a six-microphone array for making phone/video calls.
The only downside is that the charging case is pretty hefty compared to the AirPods cases. I don’t care about that as I usually keep my pods in a bag, not a pocket. We will also be interested to see how they compare to the AirPods and AirPods Pro in terms of sound quality. The AirPods Pro 2 are, frankly, amazing for in-ear phones, so this may be a tough one. We’ll find out in the reviews.
Or just by buying them, as the €150 Fairbuds are already available in Europe, and come with a 14-day trial period, which shows some confidence that buyers will like them enough to keep them.
As I said, I love my AirPods, but I do feel guilty every time I think about how wasteful they are. I’m also not too happy at having to pay such a big chunk of cash every few years, especially as the battery situation makes it impossible to hand them down to a family member or friend when I “upgrade,” like you can do with iPads, iPhones, and laptops.
Perhaps the Farbuds, in addition to being an excellent alternative in their own right, will also put pressure on Apple, Samsung, and others. After all, it’s now impossible to pretend that they can’t make AirPods with swappable batteries anymore.
Thanks for letting us know!
News Summary:
- New Fairbuds Let You Replace Batteries in Seconds
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