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AirPods Pro 3 Impossible to Repair, Earn Score of 0 in iFixit Teardown
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Any other outcome would mean they still have room left for more features. The idea these would be reparable is beyond adsurd. Asking the question means you dont understand the product.
Buy the pro 3s with an AppleCare plan and once the battery degrades you can get them replaced for free more than once I think
For those of worried about filling landfills remember....50 square miles can handle all the trash in the US for the next 1000 years and many modern landfills are covered and become parks. We won't run out of landfills.For those of you worried about filling landfills, you can recycle your Apple devices at Apple Stores.
Recycling
We’ll help you recycle your device. It’s free, easy, and good for the planet.www.apple.com
I’m greatly concerned about waste and the environment. Thankfully my requirements allow me to use my devices sometimes well beyond their expected design life. I’m happy about that.
When the stems were longer, it would’ve been convenient to have removable stems with built in batteries but usually after three years audio quality is deteriorating anyway
I've also wondered if a design more akin to AP1 could be crafted so the battery is in the long stem and possibly replaceable.
Related .. seems like someone is able to design repairable earbuds.
The Fairbuds get a 10/10 ifixit score.
I'm sure Apple could make an even better design that is still repairable, if they actually wanted to.
This is cost engineering disguised as innovation. Removing magnets and reducing battery capacity directly improves Apple’s margins while the retail price stays unchanged, or even increases. The aluminum chassis shift of the iPhone 17 Pro follows the same pattern: Apple frames it as a thermal performance upgrade, but aluminum is significantly cheaper to manufacture than previous materials. They’re systematically finding ways to reduce production costs while keeping prices high, then marketing these changes as consumer benefits.
That’s even more money, I don’t use them often so AppleCare will have expired by the time I need to use it
I am trying to be better at turning them in for recycling. So far Best Buy has been a good place to drop stuff off. Whether they actually do anything, no idea. Apple stuff I will give to Apple for recycling.
I still don’t understand why you can’t unscrew the metal end and swap out the battery. AirPods as they are currently designed are still horribly disposable.
Mother Earth would be very pleased
Mother Earth would be very pleased
I find the premise of this video to be overly simplistic. Good design isn't about solutions so much as tradeoffs. The AirPods can't be repaired, but they are designed to be ultra reliable in the first instance and there isn't much inside that will ever need repair. They are sealed up tight such that they can't be opened, but that also means that they won't get instantly nuked when they fall out of your ears and into a puddle or toilet. Would it be better if they were less well sealed and more repairable? I've dropped my AirPods in water and they survived, but I've been using my AirPods2 for years without any failures . . . so I would say that this was the better design choice. Eventually the battery will die, and they will become trash but by then most consumers will want to upgrade anyway.
Who just throws away perfectly working cables? I gave all of mine away to people who were thrilled to get them. There are millions of people who atill use lightning-charged iPhones and iPads.
I donated mine to a local college that my wife worked at. However I believe I7guy is right - bet we are the exception to the norm, sadly.
Thankfully, we can get a discount at third party retailers. Waiting for the Black Friday sale at $199.
If we follow that logic that the “eco-friendly” choice is to stick with wired headphones then why is Apple, the company that never misses a chance to remind us how much it cares about Mother Nature, flooding the market with sealed wireless earbuds that are destined for e-waste after a couple of years?
They’ve built entire campaigns around Apple + the planet, with the Earth literally cast as a character praising Apple for being responsible. If the concern is truly the environmental impact, and if wired is supposed to be the greener solution, shouldn’t Apple simply stop selling AirPods altogether?
Usually things like this get shredded and the component materials separated out by mechanical or chemical processes. They can float off the plastics in water and use magnets to recover the driver magnets. Sometimes they will go through several facilities that specialise in recovering a particular material.
RnD, paychecks, higher quality materials than in usual $20 buds.
Should they only cost like 150 at most though? Yes.