iFixIt tears down Apple’s AirPods

The gang at iFixIt, which tears apart tech products and looks at their innards, has torn apart the new Apple AirPods. Here are the highlights:

A set of AirPods contains three batteries, one in the case and one in each earpiece. The earpiece battery is a 93 milliwatt hour battery, which is about 1% of the charge capacity in an iPhone 7. The battery in the case weighs in at 1.52 Wh—about 16 times the power capacity of the earpiece batteries.   

iFixIt’s X-ray imagery (provided by Creative Electron) shows quality issues in the AirPod case’s processor. Excessive empty spaces in the solder, known as voiding, “could be evidence of low quality standards, or a rushed product release.”

Accessing any case component is impossible without destroying the outer casing, earning the AirPods a 0/10 on iFixIt’s repairability scale.

Check out the Apple AirPods Teardown for more details.