Apple’s fancy new AirPods can now be ordered from Apple’s Malaysian online store, although it’ll take a whopping six weeks – at the time of this writing – to reach customers. Naturally, the new earphones have received the teardown treatment, and it’s basically impossible to repair; it’ll cost a pretty penny too to get them replaced.
The folks over at iFixit have taken it unto themselves to disassemble the AirPods, and the site gave Apple’s new wireless earbuds a repairability score of…zero out of 10. Looking at the full teardown, it appears impossible to access the AirPods’ internals without – essentially – destroying them.
Not surprisingly, the same goes for the AirPods’ charging case; Apple used a copious amount of glue to secure the case together. Interestingly, iFixit also pointed out a potential issue with the charging case’s logic board. “Our X-ray imagery shows some quality issues in this chip’s solder joints. Empty spaces, known as voiding, could be evidence of low quality standards, or a rushed product release,” as iFixit put it.
Needless to say, users can basically forget about repairing the AirPods or its charging case. Thankfully, Apple mentioned that both of these items are replaceable if lost: it’ll cost consumers $69 (about RM310) to get a replacement for each of the earbud. The charging case, on the other hand, costs slightly less to replace: $49 (approximately RM220).
It’s worth noting that Apple’s Malaysian site has not been updated with these replacement costs for the AirPods. So for now, it appears only US customers will be able to get their AirPods replaced.
