Watch this teardown completely destroy AirPods 4 - Uplaza

A scan confirmed virtually no distinction between AirPods 4 with and with out ANC, other than the position of 1 mic.
Picture: iFixit

iFixit carried out teardowns on the brand new AirPods 4 and AirPods Max with USB-C on Wednesday, issuing repairability scores of 0 out of 10 for the difficult earbuds and 6 out of 10 for practically unchanged headphones — and completely destroying AirPods 4 within the course of.

“AirPods have historically been a nightmare to take apart, consistently earning 0 out of 10 on our repairability scale, but their bigger and more expensive sibling the AirPods Max are bordering on repairable with the first version earning a 6 our of 10, thanks to a relatively easy disassembly process,” iFixit stated.

iFixit teardown finds you gained’t be repairing your personal AirPods 4 anytime quickly

The iFixit teardown video, beneath, demonstrates how tough it’s to work with AirPods 4. Apple’s gradual enchancment on repairability in some merchandise isn’t obvious in any respect with its well-liked earbuds. Apple bought an estimated 75 million pairs of AirPods in 2023, in line with Statista, down from a peak of 114 million in 2020. That’s a variety of tiny earbuds which might be virtually not possible to restore, even by specialists like the oldsters at iFixit.

The iFixit man doing the AirPods 4 teardown turned agitated at each flip, going through extreme adhesive and components that wouldn’t budge in each the buds and the case, regardless of ample heating and prying with sharp instruments.

“This just isn’t fun anymore,” he stated, struggling to get the center, together with the battery, out of the charging case. An excessive amount of glue in there. “It’s been an absolute ordeal to get this far, and I’ve destroyed the entire device to do it.”

As for the “new” AirPods Max, they get the identical rating the unique Lighting model of the headphones received — 6 out of 10. That’s as a result of there’s nearly no distinction between the 2 units of cans aside from the connector, now USB-C.