AirPods, despite their popularity and solid sound quality for headphones, are not perfect – no technology is. That’s why it’s no surprise that AirPods owners often complain about annoying issues that can be relatively easy to fix by changing the settings. Still, even if you manage to find a workaround for connectivity issues, you can’t fix a dead battery in one of your AirPods via software. Batteries have a limited lifespan, and due to their design, you have the choice of either throwing away the earbuds or taking them to Apple for repair. However, can you replace a dying AirPods battery yourself?
So why not replace them yourself? Well, replacing the battery is possible, but it’s too complex for most people. You’d better adopt healthy charging habits to extend the battery life of your AirPods. Here’s the thing: This little headset weighs just 4 grams (or 0.14 ounces) and contains a speaker, a microphone, a bunch of microchips, and a small lithium-ion battery. It’s a narrow design, which doesn’t lend itself well to DIY or professional repairs, for that matter.
Apple technically offers a battery replacement service. However, when you bite the bullet with $49 battery service (which quickly increases to $69 per earbud if the warranty has expired, according to Reddit users), it’s too complicated for even Apple’s repair staff to handle. They simply replace the earpiece, recycle the old one, and send you on your merry way. This is something you will unfortunately have to deal with unless you are very handy with a soldering iron and have the patience to do a repair equivalent to microscopic surgery.
Why it’s not even worth trying
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How difficult can it be? Sites like iFixit offer tutorials for fixing almost anything. Although there is a tutorial for replacing AirPods batteries, the site notes that professional repairers (including those from Apple) have difficulty doing so and have called the replacement very difficult. To give you a taste of what you’ll need to do, it involves breaking the seal to open the little helmet with a heat gun at 100 degrees Celsius. Then, without damaging the tiny flexible cable, you will need to carefully protect the interior with aluminum foil before removing the battery with a soldering iron. It’s so delicate that you’ll probably need tweezers to handle the pieces while looking at them under a magnifying glass. Overall not worth it.
Most owners agree that AirPods last around two to three years. This means that if the batteries start to fail due to regular wear and tear, you’re out of luck, since the warranty for AirPods is one year from the date you purchased them. Since you’ll pay $69 per AirPod for out-of-warranty repairs, that’s a bit more than the new AirPods 4 without ANC (or about $40 less than the ANC model). This makes it much easier to buy a new pair without a DIY repair that will take you through hell and back while costing more than a replacement.
