My partner bought fake AirPods off ebay. We kind of had a feeling they'd be fake but felt it was worth the risk. We got a refund from the seller pretty quickly and they told us to keep them.<p>The pods themselves looked exactly the same. The case was the real sign. It was clearly not the same as an original case. They actually worked, but they were essentially just generic bluetooth headphones.<p>We ended up listing them on FB Marketplace. Clearly marked them as fake. Person came and picked them up and I said again that they were fake. Got the same amount we paid for them. I don't understand this world sometimes.<p>The fake sellers must make enough off of people who don't realize that they are fake that they can just write off the few that do.
This is really cool and kinda makes me want to put various things I have under such scanner.<p>However several statements like<p><i>provide optimal power efficiently</i><p>along with other assumptions made this a bit awkward to read. What does it mean to provide 'optimal' power except making it sound like a commercial? Maybe it's just me, after all I was expecting a very technical article (as have been on HN previously, also from CT scans IIRC).
On the real vs. fake Apple product front: I get a lot of my electronic bric-a-brac from garage sales. The little iPhone cube chargers are so cute and practical, but: Is it a real one, or a dangerously cost-reduced fake? By comparison, less cute chargers from other major brands, that aren't a target for counterfeiting, are therefore more trustworthy. This is another "why we can't have nice things" kind of problem.
I'd be interested in some fake airpods if they lasted twice as long and sounded 80% as good. Literally I get perhaps a year out of a set of genuine bought at Apple Store airpods before the case gives up or one airpod goes muffled or craps out. After a year Apple don't want to know or care unless you have AppleCare.<p>Decided I wasn't going to fish out for a fourth set, so I bought some Sony ones for £20 with a wire between them. Seem to work ok and for that money, meh!
I really enjoy these scans that have been popping up lately, so cool to see inside of things! Are there any intellectually property issues related to publishing these?<p>I've had a piece of (probably false) information stuck in my mind about how industrial design can be IP protected in some way, making it problematic to publish x-rays without licensing. Which I've thought of as another silly example of IP gone mad.<p>But apparently there is nothing to this, or has something changed in that space?
Use a flashlight to test. Real airpods, the plastic does a really good job at blocking the light and it won't diffuse. Fake ones almost always use shitty plastic and the light diffuses. When I was an Apple Certified iOS Technician, this was one of the tests we did.
> <i>The counterfeit AirPods even resort to using internal weights with no other function than to mimic the heft of the genuine product</i><p>That's ironic, as being lighter would actually be an advantage (makes them less likely to fall out on sudden movements).
This AirPods scan is so unbelievably cool, there is cross section view aligned along speaker battery and circuit board (click Slice Place A on the left) <a href="https://app.lumafield.com/project/b618e6f7-9a17-42bc-a2b4-a2208a667968" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://app.lumafield.com/project/b618e6f7-9a17-42bc-a2b4-a2...</a>
> significant differences that have implications for performance and safety<p>This seems to refer to charging safety, but the thing that makes me fork out for genuine headphones is ear safety - I _assume_ Apple tries to protect from damaging sound levels and frequencies, and could be held to account in a way that counterfeiters could not.
> Our CT scans reveal an intriguing difference between the heat sinks in the real and counterfeit chargers. The genuine charger uses a relatively thin heat sink that wraps around most of the transformer. The counterfeit uses a heavier, but simpler heat sink design. Apple’s heat sink requires more manufacturing steps to stamp and assemble and likely provides more even distribution of heat. The counterfeit’s design is more likely to lead to dangerous hot spots—especially combined with its less sophisticated transformer, which would tend to generate more heat.<p>This just seems like wild speculation to me. It totally reads like we found differences between Apple and the counterfeit. Let's make up a reason why Apple is better. Instead of coming from a place where you give it the counterfeit benefit of the doubt.
> Lastly, the contrast in overall build quality is dramatic between the genuine AirPods and their counterfeit counterparts.<p>That's undoubtedly true, but my anecdotal experience was that a pair of $250(?) AirPods Pro broke after a couple of months, and the $40 Chinese knockoff pair is still going after almost a year. I'm sure that, on average, the Apple ones last longer, but it's so hard for me to shell out another $250 on something that broke so quickly just because it's from a company with a headquarters that looks like a Lifesaver. And at about 1/5th the price, it's a pretty easy decision to replace the ersatz airpods if (when) they should break. Unless Apple comes out with something new and exciting, I'll stick with the fakes.
The way I see it, sooner or later, if the fakes are getting better and better and if differences are becoming so hard to spot, it might be ok to buy fakes. Especially if the difference in price would be greater than that in quality.
This way producers of fakes would be encouraged to make them better, becoming a strong competition.
I got some AirPods Pro 2 knock offs from Temu for £16.<p>Paired exactly like AirPods, was super shocked. Work great with an Apple TV. They don’t have multi connect though. But are actually more comfortable than the real deal. I find the originals hurt after about 45 mins.
Ah, the monthly Lumafield advertisement, I always look forward to these because they're actually interesting.<p>previous ones:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lumafield.com">https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lumafield.com</a>
the driver in the fake earbuds is basically like a wired earbud, which is crazy. i was expecting more sophistication there. no wonder they sound like crap!
This is the second time inside a month I've seen Lumafield portray Apple products engineering prowess. First time being when they compared the USB-C cable (unfairly because they compared against the wrong type of third party USB-C).
Is this just happenstance or is there a connection between the two companies?