Do older AirPods still hold up after years of use?

When you spend money on a product like Apple AirPods, you expect them to hold up for years. In my experience, this is a reasonable expectation. Besides the inevitable degradation of battery life, there is no evidence that audio quality deteriorates. The exception to this rule is that users who don’t clean their AirPods regularly find that the sound quality deteriorates over time. This is one of the many reasons why cleaning your headphones is so important.

In addition to ensuring consistent audio quality over time, Apple hasn’t dropped any notable features from AirPods. If you own a pair of first-generation AirPods and want to connect them to an iPhone 17, the earbuds still offer auto-pairing, easy syncing between Apple devices on the same Apple account, and auto-pause/play when you insert or remove the earbuds.

Of course, AirPods may not last as long as expected if you don’t take care of them, such as not cleaning them (the earbuds and charging case) properly, dropping them, or tossing them in your bag with abandon. Although you can’t check the battery status of Apple headphones like you can on an iPhone, you might start to see signs of wear and tear. Some examples of this include reduced listening time on a single charge as well as one earbud draining much faster than the other. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to maximize the lifespan of your old AirPods.

On AirPods, uneven battery drain usually occurs because a single earbud does all the heavy lifting to operate the microphone. Active voice calls and offline voice assistant commands use more power than just listening to music, and in my years of using AirPods, I’ve noticed that Apple generally doesn’t change the microphone earbud assignment when it’s set to Automatic. One way to avoid this problem is to manually change the earpiece used as the default microphone from time to time.

To do this, go to your iPhone’s Settings app, then tap Bluetooth, then tap the blue info icon next to your AirPods. On the Microphone setting, toggle between Always Left and Always Right every month or so. This should help balance the battery wear on each of your AirPods over time.

Fortunately, some newer models have software features that help compensate for load-related wear and tear. For example, AirPods Pro 3 uses adaptive charging technology to learn your daily usage routines. By doing so, the software intentionally suspends charging just before you usually start using them. Apple says this behavior “preserves your battery life over time.”

New generations of AirPods are typically released every two to three years. If you’re a hardcore user like me, you’ll probably end up updating your hardware with each new AirPods release, not because they still don’t sound good, but because battery life has noticeably degraded and you want all the latest features offered by the new models.

Another issue that has caused me to upgrade AirPods more frequently than I otherwise would is that one side may not charge properly after a while. Although Apple has offered recalls in the past, this has been a common complaint for years, and it affects every pair of AirPods I own, including the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 3. While Apple has never denied warranty repairs, it turns out the problem reappeared right after my warranty ended.

If you’re not quite ready to buy new AirPods, it’s worth checking out Apple’s service and repair options for AirPods. Across the earbud lineup, battery service costs $49 for each earbud. On the other hand, damaged AirPods cost between $69 and $89. For the charging case, Apple charges between $59 and $99, depending on the model. Keeping in mind that the all-new AirPods 5 start at $129, you might be better off picking up a new pair.