Fed up with throw-away earbuds
Context
I bought a pair of Sony WF-1000XM4 wireless earbuds 2 years ago (see this
article).
I am still super happy about their quality, however recently things started
going downhill;
- the left earbud battery life was easily half of the right one, so I sent it back to Sony who fixed it and sent it back to me. This was 1 month before the 2 years warranty.
- now I'm 2 months after the 2 years warranty, and guess what happened? Surely enough, the right earbud battery life is now pretty bad.
Next step
Sure, iFixit has an article explaining how to replace the WF-1000XM4 battery, but this is painful, you need a heat gun and I was reluctant to do this.
When I decided for those WF-1000XM4, I noticed that the previous model (XM3) had a battery that was easy to replace, so I assumed that'd be the case for the XM4, but turns out it's not.
Looking for the ideal earbuds with replaceable batteries
I looked on the Internet, finding a 2020 article from iFixit which mentions the WF-1000XM3, but obviously 4 years later I wanted something a bit more recent.
What is rather annoying is that I was seriously considering Pine64's PineBuds Pro, but it turns out their batteries are not easily replaceable :(
It looks like the only earbuds with easily replaceable batteries is the Fairphone Fairbuds (€149). The nice thing is that both the earbuds and the case batteries can be easily replaced.
I was almost ready to go for them, but meanwhile I found another iFixit article which scores earbud repairability, and the WF-1000XM4 are rated at 7/10, so instead I ordered a z55h battery replacement, as well as a heat gun and a cutting mat to replace the batteries myself.
We'll see how it goes, but I couldn't decide on throwing away those earbuds without giving it a try - I'll keep you posted on the outcome!
Tags: Misc