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Comment by Daniel_sk | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that you have tiny chemical batteries inside and they deteriorate with use and time, so it will hardly hold any charge after 3 years (some report much faster deterioration). Does Apple replace those batteries? How much does it cost? And can it be done outside of US? (e.g. in EU countries with no official Apple Store presence). Otherwise it's pretty expensive to pay $200 for a pair headphones and throw them away after 3 years.

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You're not expected to keep them that long, it's targeted to people who buy the new generations pretty much as soon as they are released.

Who's going to pay 30%-50% of a new version to replace his airpods or apple watch battery ? [0]

It's the same with all these hi tech gadgets relying on tiny glued/soldered batteries. You can't replace them yourself because it's either proprietary hardware or you need to literally break the product to get to the battery. And companies either don't offer replacements or charge insane amount of money for them.

Apple can boast all day long about ecology and using 100% recycled aluminium, at the end of the day they're shipping unfixable gadgets. [1][2] But it's thin and slick looking so I guess most people don't give a damn.

The first time I saw a bose QC25 with AA batteries I almost burst out laughing but it's actually much more convenient than proprietary battery packs. Compare that to the new QC35: > As you were correctly advised, battery replacement is not a service that is offered. [3]

We'll drown in these gadgets way before we drown due to the sea level rising.

[0] > Run through your battery, and it’ll likely cost you $138 to replace both year-old batteries, which is nearly the cost of a new pair.

https://www.inverse.com/article/49363-airpods-battery-warran...

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Apple+Watch+Battery+Replacement...

[2] https://ifixit.org/blog/8690/airpods-are-disposable/

[3] https://community.bose.com/t5/Headphones-Archive/Bose-Quietc...

I absolutely agree with everything in this post, but the newest model of QC35s has like 15 hours of battery life. Even if it degrades 50% over 3 years they will be perfectly usable. Airpods don't have enough physical size to overprovision battery that much.

Unserviceable laptop and cellphone batteries are terrible and apple is by far the biggest offender.

disclaimer: typed from a macbook :(

I have a pair of Sony over-ear Bluetooth headphones, with NFC, about 7 years old now, MDR-1RBT.

I have used them 5 days a week, for ~2 hours a day for almost the entirety of those 7 years, I charge them approximately once per month.

They cost £400 at the time and have been by far the best consumer electronic investment I have ever made. When the battery becomes unusable I'll find a replacement and fit it my self, but I have no plans to replace them until they are deader than dead.

I don't care much for "fashion" and they already have more features than I need (I use the physical switch to toggle off the NFC because I never need to use it), they do high enough quality audio (AAC/AptX) for streaming 320/16/44.1 and the battery life is better than any other battery powered device I own (barring the TV remote) even after all this time.

I'd love to see a premium pair of over the ear headphones driven by a licensed Apple Bluetooth stack, which by all accounts is vastly superior. It's still a win for Apple since the added bluetooth features only activate when paired to another compatible apple device; otherwise it's just standard bluetooth.

I know nothing about Apple's Bluetooth stack so I'll take your word for it; have they not licensed it to anyone to make some high quality over-ears? I just don't see Apple ever making any in-house, and I'm not sure why that is (maybe not compete with those awful Beats headphones).

The QC35s also only need the battery for wireless use/active noise cancelling, so even if your battery dies on you you can still use them with a wire and a standard 3.5 mm jack. That is, assuming you still have a 3.5mm port to plug that jack into :)

It's also a lot harder to crucify the QC35s on their cost when comparing to airpods, which don't seem to have comparable noise cancelling. If you are going to shell out for a premium product at least make sure you get a premium product.

I absolutely love my QC35s...

I was bracing for downvotes on that comment for shilling. It appears the QC35s are loved by many, myself included.

Honestly if you regularly write code in an open office like I suspect many here do; a serious, professional pair of headphones are one of the best things you can get. Wireless with active noise cancelling that are comfortable and have a robust battery life. The Sony model mentioned by another poster appear to be quite nice as well.

Smart management would make sure these things are available to their employees no questions asked.

> Smart management would make sure these things are available to their employees no questions asked.

My experience with this made me laugh. I had a company that had the right idea when they moved everyone to open floor plans; buy them "premium" headphones. The headphones they bought were expensive (valued around $150 new), but were utter garbage. I can't tell the difference audio between $5 earbuds, and $100 earbuds ... but I can tell when these beats headphones have the sizing for children. Nearly everyone ended up selling theirs and letting them collect dust.

Yea, unfortunately HR or accounting is going to be lurking around waiting to torpedo any incarnation of this; but the best option is to set a reasonable dollar amount for gear and let your engineers allocate it as part of the onboarding process. Desktop/laptop, phone, headphones, monitors, keyboard etc. If engineers want to go above the amount you set, support that as well and reimburse up to that maximum.

I worked at a company and our team was the first to move to the open floor plan.

I convinced my manager to get us all Bose headphones.

Several people from other teams (all of which had private offices) raised a stink to the CEO, who refused to approve the purchase, leaving my boss to foot the bill by himself.

I tried to love them, ears would hurt after a few hours of wear. Airpods are so comfortable I forget they are in.

Loved my qc25’s, but when time came to upgrade to wireless - new Sony’s are just so much better - better noise cancelling and USB-C charging (Bose has much better feel overall).

I often hear people saying that making such things repairable would entail massive increases in complexity and less thinness/etc., but in this case it's relatively easy to imagine how Apple could have made the batteries in each AirPod replaceable (as for the charging case, that one is pretty trivial...) while maintaining the dimensions and weight:

https://photos5.appleinsider.com/gallery/30055-49077-999-Air...

This is a metal-cased cell, like an AAA battery, only smaller. They could simply make the "stem" of the AirPod unscrew from the top to access the battery. They came up with an unserviceable design because they didn't want to, not because they couldn't. Think of things like quartz watches too --- they have just as small if not smaller dimensions, and yet you can still replace the batteries in them. (And if you think threads of that size are impossible for Apple... look at the few screws that hold iPhones together.)

You're not wrong, but I have no noticeable issues with my QC35 or AirPods after 2 years. the battery life on the QC35 is simply astounding. I once wore them on a transatlantic flight including lounge stays. Got to my destination after 16+ hours of them being on the entire time, save 60mins during a nap. Some noise cancelling, lots of podcasts and music... Battery was at 60% still.

> You're not expected to keep them that long, it's targeted to people who buy the new generations pretty much as soon as they are released.

I really don't think that's the case. I was really quite tempted by them, but was put off by the lifespan.

I think that's literally the point they were trying to make. You're not the target market so you didn't buy them.

https://support.apple.com/airpods/repair/service

$50 per airpod for new batteries.

I'm guessing they don't literally give you yours back with new batteries, but instead give you replacements and then send yours for refurbishing.

I doubt they have replaceable batteries and thus are not refurbishable, they're probably scrapped for metals

Love how the cost of replacing the batteries approaches the cost of buying a new set.

Are there any tips to make the batteries last longer?

Love how the cost of replacing the batteries approaches the cost of buying a new set

$100 < $200. I wouldn't call half the price "approaches."

That's the earbuds. now throw in the case. also -- $150 approaches the retail cost of the older model.

The case battery is a different beast. It is not outputting iPhone levels of power or recharged nightly.

>Are there any tips to make the batteries last longer?

Extend battery life by substituting them with wired earpods when possible.

I pre-ordered my Airpods the first day they were available at the end of 2016 and have used them almost exclusively for conference calls. I use them maybe once every day or so, and they sit in their charging case the rest of the time (which gets recharged periodically)

I had a call yesterday and the Airpods were beeping that they were dying at the 20min mark, and didn't make it to 30min on the call.

I love the form factor, and I just ordered the "new" Airpods, because I am hoping the battery life has improved - the old ones are basically a disposable item after the first year, from my experience.

I also use them for conference calls. I think one of the super awesome but barely talked about features of the airpods is how you can use it to handle calls nonstop all day long -- you can just wear one at a time. Both airpods have a microphone. So while you're using one, the other one is in the charging case! You can even switch them out in the middle of a call. So no need to go "oh crap I need to recharge my headset", just swap them out and you're at 100% for continuous non-stop talking.

Most days, however, I don't have calls all day long, and I can just wear both no problem and not run into the low battery beep.

I think one of the super awesome features of wired headsets is that one never needs to recharge them. Also, they are a lot cheaper than wireless headsets.

What about the part where your skull is physically tethered to your computer?

I'm on a conference call, what am I going to be doing? Laps? No, I'll be taking notes and looking stuff up on my computer.

Yesterday morning I started a conference call in my car at home and ended it sitting down in a Starbucks.

This afternoon I had a call while walking my dog.

It’s a new world.

Yes, some people like to walk.

Airpods dying on conference calls has become another common part of the joke that is conference calls generally. Seeing that happen constantly has turned me off buying them :-/

Well, that and the fact that I'd definitely lose one in the first month of ownership.

They aren’t really designed for conference calls. It’s more for listening to music and answering a few calls when they happen. AirPods are more of a light workout or entertainment headphones. Jabra, Plantronics, and the like are for conference calls.

I do use them for conference calls but I know they have limited capabilities. My 14 hour Jabra headset will do just fine and have noise cancellation.

> It’s more for listening to music

If only. At this price, you have hundreds of options with much better sound quality

Here is a sample of the headphones that I own:

    1. Sennheiser HD650 w/ Schiit Magni2/Modi2
    2. Sony MDR1000x
    3. Airpods

The Airpods sound...not great. Especially when compared to the Sennheisers. Still, I am not going to carry a large pair of headphones (or a dac/amp) everywhere I go just so I can have the very best (tm) audio experience. The reality is that most listening environments are _terrible_ and much of the quality of a given audio device is lost. Airpods check a lot of boxes that are not checked by my other headphones.

Legit question: what headphones are you talking about?

Requirement: in-ear and no wires or over ear hook thing.

At this price point you are paying form factor and lightweight. Bose and Sony have much better headphones at a similar price point. Both are much bigger and may have cords but the quality is much better. They last longer too.

At this price you're paying for recognisability and affluence signalling. Apple will be able to launch a 'limited series' of 'black airpods with gilded touch rings' - with the colour being the only differentiator from the regular product - at a 50% price increase and see considerable sales.

> At this price you're paying for recognisability and affluence signalling.

Give it a rest, Apple makes great hardware with great software. That's why people buy it, nothing to do with being cool.

Airpods dying on conference calls has become another common part of the joke that is conference calls generally. Seeing that happen constantly has turned me off buying them :-/

Like everything in life -- you use the right tool for the job.

If you're on a lot of conference calls, then you buy a headset or something else suited to that task. AirPods are not that item. They're for listening to music while running, or at work, and answering the occasional phone call.

I don't complain that my Hello Kitty-branded eeePC 701 can't run the latest AI framework.

If you want to do business, you buy a business tool.

I find the best solution is to just use one at a time. The other charges while talking. They charge must faster than they get consumed, so you can use steady-state schema all day with zero interruption.

This might bethought of as a feature - if you're having that many long conference calls on the regular, you're probably have much bigger problems...

It's more the hip PMs and business-side folks who are on calls a good percentage of any given day, trying to use them for work, than too-long meetings killing them all at once. I don't think they've got the battery life for people in those roles, but boy do they really want to use them. Good for a chuckle a week or so if you're spending even 2-3 hours a week on calls with those sorts.

Why not use one AirPod at a time? That way one is charging, the other in use.

Just think of it as earbuds as a service, with a three-year renewal cycle

Feels hard to justify - from a price and environment perspective. Especially if other equipment can and will go this route.

Fool me once...

Yeah, just had an amazing two years of trouble-free wireless audio conference calls. Never again!

> I had a call yesterday and the Airpods were beeping that they were dying at the 20min mark, and didn't make it to 30min on the call.

> I love the form factor, and I just ordered the "new" Airpods, because I am hoping the battery life has improved - the old ones are basically a disposable item after the first year, from my experience.

The OP complained about battery life and the $200 "disposable" headphones he bought a year ago, but happily bought the next iteration, hence my comment.

Fool me once...

I am complaining, yes, that the battery wore out much faster than I expected, but other than the battery life I love them. The new one is supposed to have much better battery life, and it's only $160 for something that I said I use every day, so it will be worth it if they are better.

Even if they aren't, and I had to buy a pair every year, that's like 50 cents a day for something that I enjoy using (until the battery dies)

Or OP likes them so much they're willing to replace them despite the flawed battery life.

Also, OP said they purchased them in 2016 - not a year ago.

I’ve had my AirPods for a while. The battery life has indeed degraded, but they’re pretty good for an hour of listening, and I never really do more. I’d be more disappointed as a heavy user.

They’re also the only earphones I can stand while exercising. Before the AirPods, the annoyance of the wire flopping around or on my skin, etc. made me mostly just not listen to anything. So, I don’t really compare them to anything wired, because I don’t consider them an actual alternative. I just won’t listen anymore.

Interestingly, I seem to be one of the few people the AirPods don't work for when it comes to exercising - they don't fit well in my ears, so they'd fall out if I tried to exercise in them :( .

Love them in general though, they are good enough for the price & what they do.

I have the same problem, clearly I have weird ears. They're a little cumbersome but I bought some EarSkinz and the problem is 100% solved. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0741CXH71/ref=oh_aui_se...

The audio quality is also massively improved because of the better fit. The downside is you have to take the skins off before putting the AirPods back in the case. I also bought one of these pouches to keep the AirPod case and EarSkinz in. Works well, all in all

If you get the old foam slip-on covers that used to come with all Apple headphones, they might stay in your ears a little better, and you can close the case over them.

i thought i was the only one.

I’ve had my AirPods for a while. The battery life has indeed degraded, but they’re pretty good for an hour of listening.

I've had mine almost two years. I listen at work M-F, 8am-11:30am, then let them recharge at lunch, then use them 1:00pm-4:00pm. So far, so issues.

How long do you think I have before the batteries start to degrade?

They seem to be doing much better than mine! Mine are about a year old, and they seem to run about half of their original life, and I've used them perhaps 2 hours per day. I was a bit surprised at how soon it became apparent they didn't have their original battery life. I could probably listen for about 1.5 hrs now, but they still charge pretty quickly, so I usually just put them back in the case for a few minutes.

Yeah the price doens’t really scale but if you consider your time worthwhile, then add up the total amount of time it has saved you from having to untwist a jumbled mess of earphones / roll up earphones into some easily tangled roll.

I have bose wireless earbuds that are connected to each other by a short cable. It never gets tangled. And when I want to take them out I just pop them out and they hang round my neck. As a bonus, since they aren't in a pocket I don't run them through the wash. I don't know how much time airpods uses spend fumbling around in their pockets (for the airpods....), but I spend 0 time doing that and 0 time untangling cables.

you should also consider the time it takes to charge the case and the times when you want to listen to music but alas, you forgot to charge your earphones! The jumbled mess of earphones don't need to be charged.

The airpods are the only wireless headphones I've owned where this is pretty much a nonissue in practice. It's easy to develop the habit to put the case on the charger when not on the go and to put the headphones in the case when not listening. At least for me those two things is sufficient to pretty much guarantee I'll always have charged headphones.

>It's easy to develop the habit to put the case on the charger when not on the go and to put the headphones in the case when not listening.

Except the original post said to "count the time you spend untangling the cord" (which, for most good, flat-wire headphones is almost zero). Habit or not, charging takes more time than properly rolling the cord on wired buds.

That's an understatement. If your fine motor skills aren't impaired, you should spend maybe a few minutes each year rolling and unrolling your wired headphones. I'd argue it takes nearly as long to put your AirPods in their case and set them down on a charging station.

Ok start the timer. I bet you exceed one minute in a few days.

I’ve never thought of charging my AirPods or the case outside of plugging the case for half an hour once a week. I don’t even check the battery percentage.

Keeping cables nicely coiled is a solved problem. Humanity has used string and rope for millennia. There's been plenty of time to figure this out.

To this old fart, this sounds like the thousand other cases of "why learn a simple and generally useful skill, when we can use modern technology to avoid this one specific case?"

Learning a basic transferable skill is the scalable solution to this problem. You're not using wireless power cables, wireless rope to tie things to your car, wireless thread in your sewing machine, etc.

Keeping cables nicely coiled takes time. Perhaps not as much as untangling cables, but time.

Also there's a lot of time spent fiddling with the cables in use that I didn't realize I was doing until I used wireless and went back for a week.

Count to 5. That's how long it just took me to coil wired earbuds. Probably the same amount of time to pull the tic tac box out of your pocket, flip the lid, put them in one by one, and shut the lid back up.

I think you may be overestimating the time it takes me to do things, and also trying to double dip on time: Both of us have to take things out of pockets and put things in ears.

Only one of us have to coil and uncoil wires, and put wires where we want them and keep wires where we want them when they shift or are moved by external forces. Only one of us can use our headphones with a smartwatch.

AirPods aren't perfect: I've probably had connection issues ~5 times which seem to have gone away with the latest update. I haven't lost them, but they are really small and it seems like it would be easy to lose them. $170 is a lot tougher to lose than $8 (though there are also wired earbuds in the same price neighborhood). I do have to charge the case, but with my use-pattern I haven't yet run into a spot where I wanted to keep using my AirPods and didn't have charge available. Using them one ear at a time while the other charges for longer use is non-ideal, but that's mitigated by how quickly they charge.

Until I had to go back to wired earbuds for a week after using wireless for a while I didn't fully appreciate how nice wireless is.

But this is missing the other problem AirPods solve, a problem created by Apple and other tech giants - the now missing standard 3.5mm jack.

I have a laptop, desktop, iPad and iPhone - for wired I would need USB-C->3.5mm, Lightning->3.5mm, and a 3.5mm extension cord for my desktop. AirPods "just work" with each of those with only a single click or tap. So no cord tangles and no bluetooth connect/disconnect dance every time you swap devices. To me that makes them easily worth the $170 cost.

It isn't hard or time-consuming or even thought-consuming to coil 2.5' of headphone cable and stick it in your pocket in such a way where it comes back out still in a coil. Ball it up and shove it among your keys and pens and wallet and phone and of course it will be tangled.

As an aside, this is the most HN justification possible for these. "Just estimate your time spent coiling headphones and multiply it by your hourly rate then you will see how $160 is fair." Absurd.

You can solve this problem once and for all too if that’s so important to you, there are even things you can buy that help with that

I'm fine with 3 years replacement. 3 years is a very long time for a particularly small and useful device. Also $200 is not a lot of money. Inflation is under-rated in the USA.

I’ve had mine since they were released and have experienced very little deterioration. I even left them outside and out of their case for A MONTH! During summer I was house sitting, left them outside at my house for a month by complete accident, came back home and found them. Once I charged them up they worked like a charm. During this month it rained a few times too.

That’s not really the deterioration people are talking about. Using them every day multiple times will destroy them quite quickly. Seems to be around the year and a half mark.

I've used mine everyday since launch, so a little over two years. They now only hold a charge for about 45 minutes, so I end up doing one ear at a time for longer voip meetings. The case held up fine, I charge that like once every two weeks. I'd say they were generally fine for my purposes until about a month ago when they started cutting out at the end of hour long meetings.

Even still, I ordered the new ones. The convenience is easily worth it for me since I am primarily in the Apple ecosystem.

Having used my airpods 2-3 hours every day, since release. I've found the talk time to drop to a little over an hour. It hasn't been too much of an issue for me as I just charge one bud in the case when it's low and swap it out with the other.

Modern battery chemistry lasts longer, and after three years they will still hold a charge.

3 years? These things are consumables. Toss them at least annually, they won't sound as good as new by that point.

[edit: Really? You guys expect 3 years life out of your socks and underwear too? If you use the hell out of it, even a wired pair that's a year old doesn't sound as good as a pair fresh out of the box.]

It's all about conspicuous consumption. AirPods are not a lot less conspicuous than the long earlobes of the Dayaks[0] (nor in my opinion a lot less ugly), but in order for them to fulfill their signalling function they must be consumed.

I really, honestly believe that in a decade we're going to look back at AirPods as our generation's bell-bottoms. Only bell-bottomed trousers at least have some function: AirPods are a style & sustainability own goal.

0: https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/borneo_for...

I don't think so.

First, the form factor of AirPods are integral to their function. There is no separating them. Wires are a major design tradeoff.

Also, the function (multiple actually) -- social communication, gaining knowledge, entertainment -- is of high importance to many. So even small improvements are valuable.

I really don't think you're understanding this correctly.

That’s just not true, you have to support your words. They are exacly earpods minus the wires, completely honest product that had to have been made!

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