Fairbuds: In-ear with replaceable batteries

So they finally seemed to have come up with their original design after 3 years of selling non-repairable TWS earbuds, great. I genuinely appreciate that they are trying to give users more sustainable options. Perhaps they can walk back the decision to remove the headphone jack as well so that people can use wired headphones directly which doesn't use battery in the first place.

Notably Fairphone removed the headphone jack on their phones so that they could sell us these wireless earbuds. I appreciate that the battery is replacable on these buds, but not worth it imo! After all, wired earbuds don't even need batteries. :(

Advocate of the devil, but I've never replaced my earbuds / headphones because of the battery life. Usually one of them gets lost, or actually crushed and breaks.

Sony WF-1000XM3,4 had fairly easily replaceable batteries, but they regressed with the latest XM5. iFixedIt covered it here <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;News&#x2F;79140&#x2F;sony-just-nerfed-their-most-repairable-earbud-line" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ifixit.com&#x2F;News&#x2F;79140&#x2F;sony-just-nerfed-their-mos...</a><p>I am still using the XM3 - both the earbud and case batteries are repleacable.

&gt; Old batteries should never be the end of your earbuds. That&#x27;s why we designed the Fairbuds with replaceable batteries - in the charging case and both buds!<p>This is awesome. At first I thought they cheated and only made the case battery replaceable.

&gt; Codec: SBC &amp; AAC No LC3? No LE Audio? So, still HFP&#x2F;SBC telephony with crappy microphone quality and in mono? For that price, in 2024?

I&#x27;ve never had airbuds for long enough that the battery degraded before I lost or broke the buds. I&#x27;m not sure this is solving much of a real problem.

Repairability is good and will reduce waste, but I am not sure this is going to actually attract customers unless they’re already fans of Fairphone for other reasons (like ethics or sustainability or privacy or independence from big companies or whatever). To attract new customers, they need something else to stand out from a very crowded space, where there are many good choices as far as sound quality, mic quality, noise cancellation, etc. I am skeptical that these will be any better than the competition on those facets. And keep in mind, 150 Euros means it is competing with everything from budget sub-50 products on Amazon to AirPods.

Maybe I&#x27;m crazy here but I think it would be better to have a recycling process for earbuds than trying to develop ones with replaceable batteries.<p>It just seems like a lot of overhead for something nobody is going to use in practice.

I&#x27;m comparing these to my galaxy buds plus, which I bough because of theoretically replaceable batteries:<p>- pro: 10 EUR for a pair of replacement batteries for the earbuds vs ~20 EUR for a pair of VARTA batteries with shipping from Germany<p>- pro: 13 EUR for a new battery for the case. I need to go to aliexpress to find a replacement battery for the galaxy buds plus case<p>- pro: replacement process seems to be way easier because it was designed to be replaceable unlike galaxy buds plus<p>- pro: lighter than the buds: ~5g vs 6.3g<p>- pro: ANC<p>- con: more expensive. I paid half the price for the buds. But that was in 2020 money.<p>- con: they are bigger: 28.7 x 24.6 x 21mm vs 17.5 x 22.5 x 19.2mm

USB-C is a plus. No wireless charging is a bummer.<p>Something built to last for ten years would be intriguing. I&#x27;m still using my Samsung Galaxy Buds+ from 2020 as my daily driver. I prefer the capsule case to the box design of later models, and all of the internals are still &quot;good enough&quot; that I haven&#x27;t really felt the need to upgrade. Even the lack of ANC hasn&#x27;t been a dealbreaker--the passive noise cancellation just from having a solid seal around the ear has been enough to happily use on a plane.

These look great, hope ANC performance competitive. Lack voice pass through though.<p>Should have fairphone branded on the the case insetad of fairbud.

I can&#x27;t wear earbuds that stick inside your ear canal. They just don&#x27;t fit me and are extremely uncomfortable. I have two pair of galaxy buds live for this reason. I&#x27;ve even swapped the batteries on both pair to keep them going as well. I&#x27;m not switching until someone comes out with a better alternative.

The bigger problem for me isn&#x27;t that I&#x27;m listening for 6 hours nonstop and the battery runs out. It&#x27;s Bluetooth and the seeming lack of sleep on the devices when they&#x27;re not playing anything. What happens is after a commute, I&#x27;ll leave the earbuds in my pocket but the Android phone stays connected and they drain overnight. This might be because of the noise canceling staying on.<p>Either way I have to remember to turn off Bluetooth on the phone, because who&#x27;s going to manually unpair and repair.<p>And the earbuds have no light on them in one case (Ankers) and no obvious way to turn them off without listening to a chime (Shures).<p>I&#x27;d like to just blame Bluetooth out of spite, but it seems perhaps a limitation of the drivers of those devices.

I really like the idea of this since I’ve been through a few pairs of AirPods. I’m not digging the shape as much but love the idea.

How does &quot;dual point&quot; compare to &quot;multipoint&quot; advertised in some newer (even some decent&#x2F;cheap) ones?<p>I&#x27;m looking to &quot;upgrade&quot; but only because the batteries in my current pair are shot. It feels so bad to have things like this just go into a landfill when they&#x27;re perfectly fine other than the battery.<p>edit: oh, these are also 5x as expensive as the $30 earbuds I bought 2 years ago that have a really decent sound profile. Oooof. Sustainable, at a 5x premium? :&#x2F;

And of course they don&#x27;t ship to the US. I&#x27;ll be picking these up as soon as I can find a way to buy them. Maybe Murena will sell them soon, like they do the Fairphone.

I wish I could look at things like this without cynacism anymore. I just dont see any value here. The biggest issue witb earbuds to me and i suspect many others. Is that earbuds are easy to drop&#x2F;lose&#x2F;break. The nature of the product exposes it to water,sun,body fluid.<p>Ill have long replaced them before i need a new battery due to degredation. Wireless earbuds are a massivly oveesaturated market and you can get comparable earbuds for &lt;$20.<p>I suspect this is fair co losing its way and engaging in blatent greenwashing.

Here is an earbuds public service announcement : remember to clean them with alcohol on a regular basis. (inner ear pimples can be painful) Worth buying a little cleaning kit with small cleaning sticks and some pipe-clean like brushes. Also watch out if there is a fabric or glued cover on the sound hole: alcohol will probably dissolve the glue (these aren&#x27;t really designed to last long or be cleaned) Its usually fine to just let the rubber hold it, or use a tiny amount of RTV silicon to glue it back in place.

Small thing &#x2F; pet peeve: the website sets language based on my location rather than on what my browser is telling it is my language of choice in every single HTTP request.

I have recently become a fan of bone conducting head phones. These go behind the ears. Sound quality is good for listening to podcasts while walking. No wires. You can still hear the road noise, which is important when you are walking outside. It also feels more sanitary.

I’m most curious about if the connection issues have been resolved for non-AirPod earbuds, I have AirPod pros that I’m looking to replace, but last time I looked at all the alternatives it was really annoying to switch between devices.

they&#x27;ve managed to hit a good starting price but it still feels positioned like their phones.<p>for context: you can get better sounding non-anc tws for a third of the price, or good budget anc options under 100 usd. i have been personally using a pair of jabra (non-anc) for more than past couple years that i bought for under 40 usd on discount.<p>if they sell individual headphone for those who lost an individual piece for a fair price, perhaps there is a niche for them in terms of value. otherwise the one-off just buy a new pair for competing offerings are very close alternatives.

Very cool! I am curious if it takes standard batteries, or something custom from them that will be unobtainable in a few years?<p>I&#x27;m also curious if the noise cancelling is any good... I&#x27;m tired of being locked into overpriced low quality Bose products, but historically they have been the only ones with truly good noise cancelling. As I have ADHD I need really good noise cancelling to do my job in an open work environment.<p>Lastly, I&#x27;m wondering what the deal is with the earbud tips, as I&#x27;ve found I often need a custom or weird sized one to get things to stay in my ear. The Bose ones generally work for me, as they come with a large array of sizes, but the photos make this look like just a single size.<p>I&#x27;ll keep an eye on these- if I can answer these 3 questions&#x2F;issues I&#x27;ll buy a set.

I just don&#x27;t get how they&#x27;re still around. I&#x27;d never spend EUR 700 for an android phone. It&#x27;s sad, but iOS is so much better.

I think the key differentiator here for audiophiles is that they are allowing EQ from their app. I think if Resolve, Crinacle or similar gets their hands on it (though Crin has his own competition in the wired space) and creates a good EQ profile and it&#x27;s competitive, I think this could carve out an important niche.

This is better than a phone I think which requires constant updates and support.

These look pretty compelling. I&#x27;m looking forward to the iFixIt teardown

If these had pass-through audio I would buy them instantly.

Personally, I treat wireless earbuds as essentially disposable items. Even if they&#x27;re mechanically reliable, they fall out on a ride&#x2F;run, they fill up with earwax, and are otherwise way too vulnerable to invest hundreds of dollars on.<p>The sound quality of $30 Bluetooth earbuds from no-name vendors is plenty good enough in the terrible acoustic environments I use them. If you want good sound quality, no earbud is ever going to come close to a good set of full-size headphones, so I&#x27;d prefer to invest money in those instead.<p>Yeah, active noise cancellation would be nice but I imagine that the next generation of cheapie earbuds will have that too.<p>While I get the desire for reducing environmental impact, the total mass of these earbuds is so small that it hardly seems worrying about in terms of the millions of tons of crap that goes into landfill every year.

wake me when the firmware is replaceable too.

What’s “fair” about these ear buds? Is that a statement of quality? Because, if so then that’s not a strong selling point.<p>“Meet the world&#x27;s most repairable premium earbuds.”<p>Okay, if you’re going to lead with This as your flagship feature… well, that says to me they must be complete garbage. Is this a joke?

They look like custom batteries.<p>Why did they not use a standard battery like a 18350 or 16340 for the case? Other advantages too (easy to find alternative chargers and can keep a charged spare).<p>I presume size constraints would make it difficult to find a commodity battery size for the earbuds?