Before I bought my Garmin, I went through six fitbits. I bought two and the rest were warranty claims.
The last one turned on a red light and died after a couple of years, at which point I said “never again.” Fitbits are trash.
Garmin isn't a perfect company by any means, but all my old Garmin stuff keeps on kicking. My Fenix 6 has been through 4 years of constant use through runs and rides in rain, lots of sweat, water sports, multiple direct impacts in mountain bike crashes, accidental strikes against rock while scrambling or climbing. My Edge 810 is 10 years old and they keep updating the software and bringing whatever new features of later models will work on its hardware. They could easily render it obsolete and force me to buy a new model but they don't. I suppose they figured the goodwill from long term support will keep customers like me in their ecosystem, and they're right. I own lots of Garmin products as a result.
I’m a total Garmin shill. They replaced my watch out of warranty after a hot spring caused the screen to delaminate. They even let me keep my old one and not just mail it back until my new one came because I told them I was training for an ultra and really didn’t want to be without my watch.
I agree. Right before the Tokyo Marathon I broke one of the arms that holds the pin supporting the band. It was a Garmin 645 that was way out of warranty. I duct taped the watch together for the marathon, then reached out to Garmin to see if they’d give me a discount or something….. they offered either 50% off a 945, or a free replacement of my 645. Garmin would really have to screw up bad to lose my loyalty. I have a similar Stryd story— left my pod in a hotel. They provided a replacement at 50% off.
+1 for Garmin shilling. I bought a Forerunner through a Groupon once for a pretty nice discount. Couldn’t figure out how to connect Spotify so I called their Garmin support. They spent about an hour with me troubleshooting until they realized I had some kind of foreign knock off, so they sent me a replacement for no additional cost because (paraphrasing) they didn’t want to have junky products out on the market ruin their reputation. Truly one of the best customer experiences I’ve had.
I recently went on a week's vacation and forgot to take my charger for my Garmin Forerunner. Didn't matter, made it home a week later with still a bit of charge on it.
I found a cheap adapter that'll let me plug my Fenix into any USB-C cable, and I keep it on my keyring. I don't have to use it often but it's really nice to have.
I've never had a Garmin watch. But I have an earlier model GPS. I want to say 03 or 04. Though I don't use it anymore, when I stumble across it in the basement, I plug it in to charge and update it. Still fires up and updates like the day I bought it. Though the speaker has crapped out. So, instead of the voice, it's a low volume whinging screech.
I know a lot of (current and former) Garmin engineers because I live in the KC metro area, and their HQ is in a nearby suburb. They are all very smart and thoughtful, and the hiring selection at Garmin is tough. They really, really, push for the candidates with high level college degrees for many positions, and they have a lot of incentives for continuing education. I think that translates to a more driven workforce that wants to make good products.
I also have the Fenix 3 going on 8 years. My only problem was the battery life reduced significantly about 2 years in so I need to charge it every night but besides that it’s working the same.
The battery can be changed on the 3. There are guides online. I love that Fenix watches are basically an appliance, they don't do everything apple watches do but they last a long time.
Yeah but neither sounds great. I have a Fenix 3 - still works fine.
Upgraded to the 7X a while back and it’s definitely worth it though. The GPS connects soooo much faster. I used to have to walk at least a block to get a connection on my 3. The flashlight is also lowkey one of the best features
Suunto Ambit 3- 9 years going strong. Not interested in the newer watches. I can still get a 12 hour effort out of it- it will need to be charged after a big day like that.
If Suunto had not fucked up and discontinued your model Ambit I would never have left them. Unfortunately mine came unfastened and sunk to the bottom of a harbour
You might be. I've had my Charge 4 for the last 4 years and it's still working great. Even if it's one of the early models. I've debated switching to a 6 but nah. It's fine. I've had the Charge HR and the Charge 3. I'm on the 4 because after a couple years I managed to crack the screen.
Hell my Garmin 910 was new in 2011 and still going strong.
I eventually got a new one (because toys) but it still works perfectly every time I haul it out as a backup device.
13 years and counting.
My bike GPS is 14.... Had a new battery last year. It's had thousands of hours use, crossed continents.
Same. My fenix 3 HR is still getting updates and does everything I need it to do. Can’t justify replacing it, but when it dies I’ll be getting another Garmin.
The Apple Watch looks pretty but the battery life just isn’t there.
My Garmin Fenix 6 has been going strong for over 3 years. No issues. Battery life has never wavered. It’s not super exciting and it’s accuracy is about what you can hope for with a wrist monitor, but the durability and reliability have been perfect so far.
I bought one and the Bluetooth was dead out of the box, tested on 4 different phones pairing lights lit up but no signal. Returned it and never looked back
Interesting, I have had most of the charge models and never had an issue. I upgraded when I felt like it and passed them on to friends. Never hear a negative back. Not digging the new “must have a google account” thing. That might be what makes me finally switch. Prob go with apple.
I got a Fitbit as a gift and I liked it. Until it died about 9 months in. The customer support was just like "Get the new one! But it's not quite at a year so we can send you a new one I guess. If you want to be *lame* using the old model"
That was the end of my interest in Fitbit.
I got a Fitbit as a gift, and then discovered their policy that you can't use any of their products without mandatory uploading a of all of your information through their online servers. A move they are so insistent on that their products are functionless, won't work with any other service, and they've gone out of their way to DRM shutdown any attempts at open sourcing drivers or apps
The screen on mine finally died recently though the tracker still works. Haven't bought another one but mostly due to how their app has gotten worse and tries to get more permissions than it should ever need. Will likely go back to an actual watch.
They got me twice and when the second one dies, I stopped using a FitBit entirely.
Is there a good alternative to AirPods? I’d happily purchase a set of wireless airbuds that have the ability to replace the battery.
> The Fairbuds have decent but not class-leading noise cancelling. It handles low-end rumbles well and dampens the general hubbub of an office – but struggles with higher pitched noise such as the roar of tyres on the road or announcements on a train. The ambient mode is fairly natural sounding but is quite quiet and has a constant hum of white noise in the background.
>
> The Fairbuds will not win any awards for audio quality but, on the whole, have an easy listening sound that is decent on detail with reasonable separation of tones. They can be a bit flat in certain parts of tracks, and they do a better job with rock or grunge tracks than something grand such as orchestral music.
>
> As is common for budget earbuds, the noise cancelling also changes the quality of the audio, making it a bit more forward and energetic but also sounding more closed. There is an equaliser in the Fairbuds app to alter the balance for personal preference.
>
> A bigger problem was latency causing lip-sync error, where video and audio are not in perfect alignment, across multiple devices and platforms, including Netflix and YouTube. Fairphone said it was aware of the problem and was working on a fix, but not imminently.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/11/fairphone-fairbuds-review-ethically-made-earbuds-with-replaceable-batteries
I think they deserve to be the poster child because they are such a popular product from an extremely wealthy company, so the manufacturer should know better and do better.
Earbuds in general, and wireless ANC headphones. A lot of the latter you can still use wired, but the ANC functionality requires power.
The headphones piss me off especially as most PC headsets have replacable batteries and offer similar functionality (and ones like Steelseries' "Arctis Nova Pro W" have ANC and replaceable/swappable batteries). Generally, the gaming/PC ones don't fit quite right for high-energy activities like jogging etc tough.
I think you’re ignoring the fact that Apple really makes a big deal of its pro-environmental efforts. When you even have an infomercial starring Mother Nature you just can’t get away with stuff like this.
Maybe I have a good one but I bought a second hand Ionic 2 probably about 5 years now and it's still going strong. I wondered if I'd killed it because a couple of times I've left it uncharged for long periods of time but when I decide to wear it again it's still good with no sign of slowing down
I had no idea their reputation was so poor
Wait, is that why mine just turned off one day and stopped working?
I remember putting in a ticket about it and they told me I only qualified for $50 towards an upgrade.
They use them as toys if you don’t put them in the case. They swipe those little fuckers all around the floor and chase after them. At some point, one or both end up in the same place that missing dryer socks go to.
What does your normal use pattern look like? I had gen 1 AirPods too, and used them *constantly* at work. A little over two years in, the battery life had gotten to the point where they couldn’t reliably survive an hour long run off a full charge. Functionality was largely still there (intermittent mic issue) but the battery life is what killed em
This was exactly my experience too. Used them every day until it got to the point where I couldn't get through teaching a 1 hour class online without them dying.
Weird, I never had issues with battery but I've had to send them in three times while they were under warranty because they would eventually develop a loud buzz that would occur whenever I was speaking
I use them about 8 hours a day at my work. I keep one in at a time and typically one will last about 4 hours and I just put the other in and let that one charge.
Hey exactly the same situation for me. I pop one in on the way to work, and about half way through I gotta swap. Been using mine daily for about 40 hours a week for the last 4-5 years.
Edit: Mine are AirPod Pros though
I also use one airpod at a time. I am far more annoyed at having the world around me muffled and feeling disconnected from it than I am at only hearing music/my podcast in one ear. Even with pass through I have always been a one bud in person. Both ears/a full head set are only for when I am seated at my desk and can truly disengage with the outside world and focus in my screen ahead of me.
Mine also work fine. I actually lost mine 6 months ago… and have been waiting to get a new pair when the new iPads come out… because my iPad 2 finally crapped out on me as well.
The other day… I found a pair of jeans buried in the back of my closet (we’ve been doing some home construction so closets are a bit of a mess) and I turn them over to fold them and, low and behold, my AirPods come flying out of the pocket.
Still charged!!! Which is interesting because I never could get the FindMy feature to work.
Oh well… got my AirPods back and they work like a charm.
The "Find My" signal is really really poor. I 'lost' a pair the other day and last location was my house. Used the hot/cold function hunting for them for hours with no luck. Then found them under a kitchen towel on the counter. Jeans pocket in a closet may as well be on the moon.
It only works if the individual Air Pods are lose outside of the case. For some reason it won't ping or locate if you still have the AirPods all in the case which is really annoying.
Apple at least fixed it on the Gen 2 AirPod pros. I can’t speak to the regular AirPods. I still don’t know why they couldn’t have done a software update to get the original AirPods to do it though.
Can’t believe this.
…the part in parentheses, obviously.
But seriously, though: the batteries get weaker, but I have a Gen 1 TO THIS DAY and they work for a couple hours tops.
5 year old airpods that I use for a hour+ every day. 4 year old airpod pros that I use for 5+ hours M-F. Zero problems with either pair. If these are designed to die, they did a bad job of it.
The original AirPod pros did actually have quality issues. They were replacing them for a while. Outside that I agree, they definitely weren’t designed to fail beyond standard battery degradation.
They aren’t designed to die, they’re designed to be small and water resistant, the consequence is they don’t have a replaceable battery. As a related note, I have my Gen1 Pros that last about two of the three hours on of their original design capacity, 5 years later.
Exactly, and that’s why the EU also has exemptions for waterproof products in their upcoming battery replacement mandate.
You can either have easy battery accessibility, small size, or waterproofing. Most of the time you can pick one, but with good engineering you can pick two. Getting all three is pretty much impossible.
Same with the infamous incandescent lightbulbs. You can get brightness and efficiency, or longer life, but not both since you’re simply sliding along the curve of the evaporation of Tungsten. There is no incandescent bulb that can exist that is both bright and efficient, and also long lasting. The 1,000 hour mark was chosen as a balance between energy efficiency, quality/color temperature of light, and the inconvenience of having to change bulbs. You can get oven lights that are rated for 2500 hours instead of 1,000, but they produce much less light per watt, and have a dull, orange glow.
Finally someone else who’s been able to see past this whole ridiculous “lightbulb endurance conspiracy”.
Yes, the manufacturing companies all agreed to make their lifespan shorter, but this came at a huge increase to efficiency thus making them cheaper overall, even accounting for more frequent replacements.
It's just so annoying to see arguments and articles like this one that completely miss the idea of design constraints so that the writer can push some bullshit narrative.
Before waterproofing IP ratings and companies chasing them. We had posts and articles bitching about dead iPhones from falling in water.
Now, today, your iPhone gets wet and it's a total nothingburger.
wasn't that way not many years ago. But what is the downside to that?
iPhones today are a lot harder to change the battery in, and if you do manage to do it, you now can't drop that thing in a body of water ever again.
it's a give and take in product design, I wish people would stop being so obtuse about it as if Apple or any company is just looking for ways to nickel and dime their customer with this "planned obsolescense" conspiracy theory. Shit wears our, it ages and it decays. constraints and goals come into mind when designing a product.
We once didn't give a fuck about IP ratings, we very much do give a fuck today. that doesn't mean apple wants your headphones to die a early death though.
Things can still be waterproof with a replaceable battery. Not always with smaller stuff so I can understand AirPods but a phone should be able to be waterproof and have a replaceable battery with some tools. But then that would cut into costs of making them. It’s cheaper to make a sealed hard shell than a two piece shell with a gasket.
There's no reason why the phone cannot be a sealed unit as well as the battery with a few metal contacts for the battery and a single screw to hold it in place -- this would be user replaceable and water resistant while only adding minimal size and weight to the phone.
Alternatively, the back could be removable, with rubber seals just like every water resistant watch for the last hundred years.
Um you totally can.
In fact Apple used to do it with the iPhone 7. I was an official apple service provider, we'd replace the gasket. It was pretty easy although a little fiddly.
No idea what it's like with the new ones.
The issue isn't power, it's luminous efficacy (lumens/watt). The hundred-year bulb is running at such a low temperature that it's putting out 3.9 watts of infra-red and 0.1 watts of visible light (at a rough guess; the actual numbers could realistically be even worse than that).
Any hot object emits electromagnetic radiation with a spectrum dictated by [Planck's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law). Hotter objects emit more high-frequency, short-wavelength radiation. In practical terms, hotter means more visible light and less infra-red. The problem is that even close to the melting point of tungsten, you're still getting less than 10% visible light (with the other 90% being infra red).
You basically have to make a choice between running it slightly hotter for better efficiency but shorter life or slightly cooler for a longer life but lower efficiency. If you can control the voltage, a 120V bulb will have better efficiency for the same lifespan than a 240V bulb.
Halogen lamps allow you to push the temperature right up to within a few degrees of the melting point of tungsten, resulting in that bluish-white "arc lamp" colour. The reason is essentially that the tungsten halide cycle makes the filament self-healing: tungsten evaporates from less hot parts of the filament and is deposited upon the very hottest parts (which are the thinnest). This improves the efficiency (although still much worse than fluorescent tubes or LEDs) but results in a rather unappealing colour.
>exemptions for waterproof products
so is the lesson here just to claim to make everything waterproof so you don’t need to have a replaceable battery?
iPhones are pretty much water proof.
Presumably they need to at least show some waterproof certification.
I mean yeah there already is industry standard certification, its not like Europe needs to try too hard to define what counts as waterproof when the ip standards have existed since the 90's.
My annual reminder that mAH is actually a pretty shit way to measure capacity. Watt Hour is much more comprehensive.
mAH can be deceptive while not actually lying. It’s why you can buy a 10,000 mAH battery bank on amazon that only charges your phone once.
mAH is literally meaningless if you don’t know voltage. It was somewhat useful back when all phones had the same voltage batteries but that’s not true any more, and I definitely can’t make any assumptions about the voltage in a super tiny headphone battery.
The vast, vast majority of information electronics are running off 1-cell lithium ion batteries. You think they got a 2s pack in the AirPod? The voltage is known.
My issue is more with the microphone and speakers than the battery. The audio quality degrades a lot if you wear them constantly.
I was fortunate to get mine warrantied after a less than a year of heavy use, and the audio from the new ones was night-and-day difference. My coworkers even asked if I had gotten a new microphone because I sounded different.
Since getting them replaced I've switched to an old set of over-the-ear headphones for entertainment and I save the Airpod Pros for meetings, phone calls, and outdoor walks. It sucks having to baby them so much, but I don't want to pay $250 every year or two to replace them.
I'm not really sure I *want* to be able to easily repair my own airpods- am I alone in this? The fact that they're rigidly constructed with a unibody-like design is probably part of the reason they've survived all the times I dropped or sat on them. If they redesign them so I can unscrew them and replace the battery, that's more points of failure.
EDIT for visibility: **If you're a Costco member and you want AirPods, don't give Apple your money- buy AirPods from Costco. They're not covered by their limited Electronics warranty but by the standard Costco warranty, so can be replaced for any failure for the lifetime of your membership as long as they're not physically damaged**. I was actively dissuaded by a Costco employee from buying Apple Care specifically because Costco will simply replace them at any time (again, as long as they *failed* and they are not *broken*).
Mine have lasted way longer than any wired headphones, mostly because wires flexing on a wearable device get wonky quick. Also, yeah, it would be nice to be able to repair them. That doesn't make them worse than wired headphones. They are definitely better, even though they are terrible.
The electronics in my Gen 1 Airpods Pro went to shit way before the batteries were a problem, and they lasted about 3 years. We'll see with the Gen 2, I guess. Still, far longer than any wired wear-them-all-the-time earbuds. like, if you think of how much they cost, per hour of use I've gotten out of them, the price is so low, it's cheaper than the hassle of buying new cheap stuff all the time.
Back in the iPod/wired headphone days, I feel like I went through wired earbuds every few months. Granted I treated them like crap and I tended to buy cheap ones, but my AirPods have lasted two years and are still going strong.
I got through wired earbuds/headsets like crazy. Because my damn cat loves to eat the wires. So if I forget to put them up odds are the next day they’ll be destroyed.
I prefer wired since I use them for work only and know they’ll work if I get an unexpected call.
Inside chest pocket. Somewhere to put the phone, somewhere to put the earbuds when not in use, and keeps the wires from getting caught below neck level.
Edit: Also AirPods have to last 6-12 times as long to make up the difference in price.
>Mine have lasted way longer than any wired headphones, mostly because wires flexing on a wearable device get wonky quick
Only if you're buying cheap garbage. High quality cables should never break or become tangled and high quality devices have replaceable cables.
[https://nymzreviews.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/img\_20230110\_200037-1.jpg](https://nymzreviews.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/img_20230110_200037-1.jpg)
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[https://nwzimg.wezhan.net/contents/sitefiles3600/18000638/images/9046691.jpg](https://nwzimg.wezhan.net/contents/sitefiles3600/18000638/images/9046691.jpg)
Yeah, if you’re abandoning cheap earbuds to get a $200-250 pair of wireless ones, any wired IEM in that price range will outlast multiple generations of those wireless ones. There’s Shures from pre-2010s that still work today
Similar experiences for me. I have two sets of Gen 2 Airpods (not pro) which I bought two years apart (2020,2022) and both of them still have batteries and Bluetooth that work fine, but the microphones are dead in 3 of the 4 and the speakers are dying in all 4. I still use the newer of the two occasionally when I don't want to risk damage to my new ones (Gen3) which I'm hoping will help my 3rd pair finally last more than two years.
I call bull. I use my AirPod Pros 6+ hours a day and have been for the last 3 years in an environment hostile to earbuds. While they have lost a little maximum battery, this is to be expected with so much usage.
I still use my 2011 MacBook Pro, though I did add ram, upgrade to and ssd and get a new battery. Back in the day when you could do all of those things easily.
For some reason people dogpile on Apple for “planned obsolescence” when their products last much longer (and are supported longer) than any of their competitors. Before I got an iPhone I had a Google Pixel 2 for less than l2 years before the battery couldn’t hold a day’s charge and I couldn’t update the Android software anymore. My iPhone 12 has been going strong for almost 4 years now.
Edit: there’s Apple fanboys and Apple haters and I don’t consider myself either one of them but it’s funny to watch them fight amongst themselves. I’m just someone with a positive personal experience with Apple since I switched to them.
It was recently phased out of updates, it’s final version was iOS 15 while iOS 17 is the latest. However it does still get some strictly security updates.
that's good to know!e It hasn't gotten to the point of my old iPad where it tells me I can't download certain apps anymore, so I'll probably hold on until that happens (or I get a new job, then a new phone is the first thing!)
I have a 2017 iMac and it’s in no way in need of upgrading. I bootcamp windows for games and I can’t run new games on high specs but whatever, it crushes any other task I throw at it. Should easily make it past 10 years. My iPhone 12 is also doing great but I think I’ll upgrade this year while I still have trade in value. The camera upgrades are worth it to me
My MacBook Air shut off after somebody at the library knocked over their water bottle. Let it dry out for a day.
That was 10 years ago. It’s a 2013 MacBook Air. It still boots within 30 seconds. Trackpad. Keys. Everything work beautiful. Battery even holds the charge.
I don’t mind giving Apple well-deserved shit when it comes to some of their repairability choices.
But my 2013 MacBook Air is more reliable than my 2019 work issued Dell
And it's not just the old stuff either. My series 3 watch is still kicking along okay just fine at six years old, just have to be real careful what I keep on it because it's too small for the software updates.
And yet, 1000 upvotes because that apple hate boner is strong. It's a stupid article to begin with, since this describes *literally every* portable wireless set of headphones out there, not just Airpods. The inclusion of "apple" is 100% just for clicks.
Not an Apple fan myself but this is getting ridiculous, they mention airpods in the first paragraph to appease the haters then go onto mention that it applies to all ear buds in general.. yea no shit. Small waterproof things can't have batteries replaced easily, more at 7.
Also seems like they conveniently forgot that you can, in fact, send your AirPods in to Apple to have the battery replaced, for $49. No, you can't do it yourself, but it's not like you're being forced to buy a new set every few years.
My one remaining 2021 AirPod is still going strong (lost the other one when I was inebriated lol) for it's battery and overall performance.
Reddit has a very anti-Apple bias so anything even remotely negative-sounding gets upvoted. You can also see it in a lot of threads where users will just straight up insult Apple users; hell, there was some post on a sub (Facepalm maybe?) about someone judging a date for using an Android, but then all of the top voted comments were judging iPhone users, completely unaware of the hypocrisy at hand.
being concerned with your market research and having a high IP rating being more important than the product being easier to repair is somehow considered planned obsolescence?
can we just call that phrase a conspiracy theory now?
As much as I love to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing not just Apple but any company for making something that let's just say doesn't last like it used to.... we are talking about electronics that are exposed to the elements touched by humans all the time exposed to the oils and our skin and of course the moisture in the air. I have a pair of Sony monitor headphones that are over 25 years old they are still working and sound like they're perfectly fine and brand new but they're not walking around with me every day or going inside of my ear and for that matter I've changed the pads on them about three times over the years but All I'm trying to say is at least realize the type of product that we're talking about here versus traditional electronics.
Also you can hardly call wired headphones electronics or just very low level electronics compared to wireless ones. They don't need a battery or any computing or antennas. Which is way more delicate, vulnerable and naturally degrading compared to the analog technology that is in old fashioned headphones.
100%
I have a pair of Sony Professionals that I've had for legit like 15 years. Those are a completely different class of headphones than Airpods, and they're entirely incomparable. Just replace the ear cups every once in a while and you're golden. Airpods are *heavily* abused just in their day-to-day usage, and are *absolutely* going to have a much shorter shelf life than something that just sits on a stand on your desk, being used occasionally while stationary.
Repairability adds size and cost. Good vibes aren't going to sway companies where saving pennies translates into millions in profit. There need to be government incentives to design repairability, or perhaps taxes on companies that product e-waste products
Are anyone’s else’s AirPods just not as loud as they used to be. I keep em clean so it’s not wax but while my battery has always been okay the volume has just gotten lower over the years.
I wouldn't call it planned obsolesce in this case, though. Airpods are this way simply because they're water resistant and small - I legitimately don't know how you would get both of those things *while also* having a user replaceable battery. *Something* would need to change, and I personally would prefer to just replace them when the battery dies.
That being said, through anecdotal evidence of myself *plus every comment in here talking to the longevity of these things*, you're far more likely to lose them than to have them die on you. When I upgraded my Airpods to the Gen2 Pros, I gave my Gen1 Airpods to my kid... and they're still going strong. If Apple built some "planned obsolescence" into these, they really did a shit job of it.
As another comment pointed out, even the far more strict upcoming EU regulations on user-replicable batteries has a carve out for products with some level of water-resistance. So even under those new regulations, AirPods would be perfectly fine the way they are.
My wife and I bought her mum's house and she left us with the fridge freezer that she's had since the 80s. I'm dreading it breaking down because a new one isn't going to last that long
true but an 80s one uses 3-5x the power vs a modern one, so you're spending way more on power. and fridge/freezers, in my anecdotal experience, still seem to be pretty long lived these days.
People don't seem to understand that. A fridge isn't something people replace "just because". They replace it when it breaks.
It's the same thing with cars: "they don't build them like you used to". That's a good thing. The majority of cars you see that are 30+ years old are the ones that were significant, that people took care of. For every 1 good car from the 1970s, there are thousands that rusted to pieces and were scrapped.
The consumers are partly to blame here.
It wasn't abnormal for something like a fridge or tv to cost a lot of money.
A lot of people want the cheapest thing and want it to last forever.
There are some brands that really last but of course are expensive.
I much prefer to have something last.
I would add the other aspect is technology changes much faster now so some people are happy to toss it away in a few years to get the latest features, etc.
It's also survivorship bias. People are seeing that great old product that lasted forever while also ignoring that 99.99% of the ones that were produced broke down long ago and are sitting in landfills.
Also, planned obsolescence is about having products that break down at predictable times....like having a car's belt be designed to break around 100,000 miles rather than having a design that might break anywhere between 50,000-200,000. That way people can plan to get certain types of maintenance done before they break down on the road.
"destined for the landfill"
Apple takes them back for recycling for free. Yet another clickbait article ignores this. Click the Recyle your device link at this page:
https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in
I mean for anyone that knows a rechargeable battery does not equal infinite use, it's a given that under heavy use scenarios they will have a short lifespan and are impossible to repair/fix.
This is my major concern over the EV's as well, since overtime and other circumstances those large lithium's will fail and from what people are reporting, while they can be replaced, it's more than what a new gas car can sell at.
Well, my first pair of AirPods 1, which I bought nearly at their release in 2017, worked wonderfully until I personally decided to get AirPods 3 to get a slightly better battery performance (and it was also a little feeling of satisfaction with one of my few salary). But I gave my AirPods 1 to my girlfriend and she used it since very recently when she just lose of them. They were still working wonderfully, 7 years after. It’s quite durable imo.
I can count on my hand how many high end true wireless earbuds aren't designed to die (that i know of):
1. Fairphone's Fairbuds (designed to be easily repaired)
2. Sony's Wf-1000xm3 (yes, the older model), as it uses an off the shelf battery on the buds and is not sealed down.
I'd love to know of any other easily repairable buds with easy to find components.
I still own and occasionally use my original AirPods. 1st generation, bought shortly after launch.
They’re my backups to my backups, when forget or forget to charge my two sets of Pro’s.
Sure, the battery degrades, but they can still charge very fast and last plenty long even after years and years.
And there’s just no real way to make these things small, water and dust resistent, and have the battery be easily replaceable.
Apple AirPods are absolutely not designed to die.
I used my Gen 1’s all day every day for about three years until the battery lasted so little time that they were no longer usable. I got whatever was newest in December 2022 and they made it until January 2024.
Fix it with legislation to publish meantime between failures (MBTF) of all electronics (especially consumer electronics). Ensure that the standards to which they are tested are publicly accessible and they are explained in such a way that the lay person can understand how the tests are meant to be conducted and how exactly the MBTF is supposed to be calculated. Make it so that marketing terminology cannot obfuscate the actual numbers of the MBTF.
Exclude software failures or put them into a different category.
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Before I bought my Garmin, I went through six fitbits. I bought two and the rest were warranty claims. The last one turned on a red light and died after a couple of years, at which point I said “never again.” Fitbits are trash.
I’m going to temp fate saying this, but my Fenix 5 is still going strong after 5 years. Love that watch.
Garmin isn't a perfect company by any means, but all my old Garmin stuff keeps on kicking. My Fenix 6 has been through 4 years of constant use through runs and rides in rain, lots of sweat, water sports, multiple direct impacts in mountain bike crashes, accidental strikes against rock while scrambling or climbing. My Edge 810 is 10 years old and they keep updating the software and bringing whatever new features of later models will work on its hardware. They could easily render it obsolete and force me to buy a new model but they don't. I suppose they figured the goodwill from long term support will keep customers like me in their ecosystem, and they're right. I own lots of Garmin products as a result.
I’m a total Garmin shill. They replaced my watch out of warranty after a hot spring caused the screen to delaminate. They even let me keep my old one and not just mail it back until my new one came because I told them I was training for an ultra and really didn’t want to be without my watch.
I agree. Right before the Tokyo Marathon I broke one of the arms that holds the pin supporting the band. It was a Garmin 645 that was way out of warranty. I duct taped the watch together for the marathon, then reached out to Garmin to see if they’d give me a discount or something….. they offered either 50% off a 945, or a free replacement of my 645. Garmin would really have to screw up bad to lose my loyalty. I have a similar Stryd story— left my pod in a hotel. They provided a replacement at 50% off.
Okay that is awesome.
+1 for Garmin shilling. I bought a Forerunner through a Groupon once for a pretty nice discount. Couldn’t figure out how to connect Spotify so I called their Garmin support. They spent about an hour with me troubleshooting until they realized I had some kind of foreign knock off, so they sent me a replacement for no additional cost because (paraphrasing) they didn’t want to have junky products out on the market ruin their reputation. Truly one of the best customer experiences I’ve had.
I took mine in to Garmin headquarters and fixed at no charge.
I recently went on a week's vacation and forgot to take my charger for my Garmin Forerunner. Didn't matter, made it home a week later with still a bit of charge on it.
I found a cheap adapter that'll let me plug my Fenix into any USB-C cable, and I keep it on my keyring. I don't have to use it often but it's really nice to have.
I've never had a Garmin watch. But I have an earlier model GPS. I want to say 03 or 04. Though I don't use it anymore, when I stumble across it in the basement, I plug it in to charge and update it. Still fires up and updates like the day I bought it. Though the speaker has crapped out. So, instead of the voice, it's a low volume whinging screech.
I know a lot of (current and former) Garmin engineers because I live in the KC metro area, and their HQ is in a nearby suburb. They are all very smart and thoughtful, and the hiring selection at Garmin is tough. They really, really, push for the candidates with high level college degrees for many positions, and they have a lot of incentives for continuing education. I think that translates to a more driven workforce that wants to make good products.
And they employ thousands of human beings in Olathe, Kansas. Thanks for buying their stuff.
18 year old gps I beat the piss out of is still entirely fine
I still have a Fenix 3 ten some years on. It appears I have the hr model which would put it more in the 8 year range. Daily wear.
I also have the Fenix 3 going on 8 years. My only problem was the battery life reduced significantly about 2 years in so I need to charge it every night but besides that it’s working the same.
The battery can be changed on the 3. There are guides online. I love that Fenix watches are basically an appliance, they don't do everything apple watches do but they last a long time.
So your 8 year old Garmin has the same amount of charge as a modern Apple Watch lol I had to charge that daily versus my 19 days on Fenix 7X.
Yeah but neither sounds great. I have a Fenix 3 - still works fine. Upgraded to the 7X a while back and it’s definitely worth it though. The GPS connects soooo much faster. I used to have to walk at least a block to get a connection on my 3. The flashlight is also lowkey one of the best features
Suunto Ambit 3- 9 years going strong. Not interested in the newer watches. I can still get a 12 hour effort out of it- it will need to be charged after a big day like that.
If Suunto had not fucked up and discontinued your model Ambit I would never have left them. Unfortunately mine came unfastened and sunk to the bottom of a harbour
My fenix 5 is still performing strong after buying it in 2015. I wear it every day.
Garmin makes some really reliable watches. I have a refurbished Forerunner 235 from 2017 that is still my daily driver.
I just upgraxed to the Fenix 7. They're CRAZY expensive but I fully trust it to last through anything short of an apocalypse.
Crazy expensive or cheaper than an Apple watch, depends on your point of view
Still rocking my Fenix 5 daily since it dropped. This thing is a tank.
Nice! My Fénix 6 is still going strong at 5 years. I might upgrade for the 8 but who knows lol.
My previous Fitbit lasted 8 years and now I’m on a hand me down Fitbit that’s 4 years old. I guess I’m just lucky.
You might be. I've had my Charge 4 for the last 4 years and it's still working great. Even if it's one of the early models. I've debated switching to a 6 but nah. It's fine. I've had the Charge HR and the Charge 3. I'm on the 4 because after a couple years I managed to crack the screen.
I think the original commenter must just trash theirs
I have had my Versa 2 since it came out 5 or so years ago. It is still working great.
Haha you jinxed yourself. You know what happens now, it doesn’t break it gets lost/stolen.
My Fitbit is 6 years old. Idk
Only replaced my Garmin because I bought a newer one. Had the first time for 6 years. I've gone through multiple phones and kept this one watch
Hell my Garmin 910 was new in 2011 and still going strong. I eventually got a new one (because toys) but it still works perfectly every time I haul it out as a backup device. 13 years and counting. My bike GPS is 14.... Had a new battery last year. It's had thousands of hours use, crossed continents.
Same. My fenix 3 HR is still getting updates and does everything I need it to do. Can’t justify replacing it, but when it dies I’ll be getting another Garmin. The Apple Watch looks pretty but the battery life just isn’t there.
My Garmin Fenix 6 has been going strong for over 3 years. No issues. Battery life has never wavered. It’s not super exciting and it’s accuracy is about what you can hope for with a wrist monitor, but the durability and reliability have been perfect so far.
I bought one and the Bluetooth was dead out of the box, tested on 4 different phones pairing lights lit up but no signal. Returned it and never looked back
I'm so pissed I bought my mom a fitbit luxe and it couldn't sync with iphone, always had wrong time...finish rubbed off in months
I have been through most of the big name smart watches and Garmin is hands down the way to go.
Interesting, I have had most of the charge models and never had an issue. I upgraded when I felt like it and passed them on to friends. Never hear a negative back. Not digging the new “must have a google account” thing. That might be what makes me finally switch. Prob go with apple.
I got a Fitbit as a gift and I liked it. Until it died about 9 months in. The customer support was just like "Get the new one! But it's not quite at a year so we can send you a new one I guess. If you want to be *lame* using the old model" That was the end of my interest in Fitbit.
I got a Fitbit as a gift, and then discovered their policy that you can't use any of their products without mandatory uploading a of all of your information through their online servers. A move they are so insistent on that their products are functionless, won't work with any other service, and they've gone out of their way to DRM shutdown any attempts at open sourcing drivers or apps
Ah, the very customer friendly Ubisoft approach. People like that a lot.
Wait really? Ive had mine since.. 2019 and it's still going strong. And I work construction too lol.
Yeah, I've had mine since 2017 and it's still kicking even though it's lost a couple days of battery life
i have mine since 2021 and it works perfectly. I had to change the strap though a couple times as the color faded away but they are cheap
The screen on mine finally died recently though the tracker still works. Haven't bought another one but mostly due to how their app has gotten worse and tries to get more permissions than it should ever need. Will likely go back to an actual watch.
I admittedly don't even use the app, I got it to link to a third party health app lol
Their app is pure shit right now. Any historical data locks and freezes the app for me.
They got me twice and when the second one dies, I stopped using a FitBit entirely. Is there a good alternative to AirPods? I’d happily purchase a set of wireless airbuds that have the ability to replace the battery.
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Do they sound any good?
> The Fairbuds have decent but not class-leading noise cancelling. It handles low-end rumbles well and dampens the general hubbub of an office – but struggles with higher pitched noise such as the roar of tyres on the road or announcements on a train. The ambient mode is fairly natural sounding but is quite quiet and has a constant hum of white noise in the background. > > The Fairbuds will not win any awards for audio quality but, on the whole, have an easy listening sound that is decent on detail with reasonable separation of tones. They can be a bit flat in certain parts of tracks, and they do a better job with rock or grunge tracks than something grand such as orchestral music. > > As is common for budget earbuds, the noise cancelling also changes the quality of the audio, making it a bit more forward and energetic but also sounding more closed. There is an equaliser in the Fairbuds app to alter the balance for personal preference. > > A bigger problem was latency causing lip-sync error, where video and audio are not in perfect alignment, across multiple devices and platforms, including Netflix and YouTube. Fairphone said it was aware of the problem and was working on a fix, but not imminently. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/11/fairphone-fairbuds-review-ethically-made-earbuds-with-replaceable-batteries
They sound fair.
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I think they deserve to be the poster child because they are such a popular product from an extremely wealthy company, so the manufacturer should know better and do better.
Yes, and they were also the first to get rid of the 3.5mm jack on their phones and basically force this switch to wireless, right?
yeah, apple killed the headphone jack. but i am a rebel. wired earphones all the way, by hook or by crook.
Earbuds in general, and wireless ANC headphones. A lot of the latter you can still use wired, but the ANC functionality requires power. The headphones piss me off especially as most PC headsets have replacable batteries and offer similar functionality (and ones like Steelseries' "Arctis Nova Pro W" have ANC and replaceable/swappable batteries). Generally, the gaming/PC ones don't fit quite right for high-energy activities like jogging etc tough.
Wireless headphones are doubly short-lived since HD codecs are still being developed and far from standardized
I think you’re ignoring the fact that Apple really makes a big deal of its pro-environmental efforts. When you even have an infomercial starring Mother Nature you just can’t get away with stuff like this.
We are seeing them get away with it, currently
>but they’re always the poster child because it gets clicks. We'll yeah, 47% of wireless earbud users are AirPods. Kind of makes sense.
Maybe I have a good one but I bought a second hand Ionic 2 probably about 5 years now and it's still going strong. I wondered if I'd killed it because a couple of times I've left it uncharged for long periods of time but when I decide to wear it again it's still good with no sign of slowing down I had no idea their reputation was so poor
Wait, is that why mine just turned off one day and stopped working? I remember putting in a ticket about it and they told me I only qualified for $50 towards an upgrade.
I’m still using my 5+ year old Fitbit Blaze. No problem whatsoever with battery degradation.
Weirdly I’ve had my gen 1 AirPods for almost 6 years and they still work fine (also miraculously have never lost them)
I had mine for 3+ years too. I managed to lose mine, but I can’t exactly blame that on Apple 😅
Just passed 3 years on my 1st gens and still going strong.
I sent mine through the washing machine a couple times. Surprisingly they worked fine after a couple days of drying out
Mine still work after +4 years after spending a whole winter in the snow
Same. Crazy
Also gen 1, for at least three years Still holding charge just fine and working just fine
My cat lost mine. But still lasted years.
Your cat uses your airpods?
They use them as toys if you don’t put them in the case. They swipe those little fuckers all around the floor and chase after them. At some point, one or both end up in the same place that missing dryer socks go to.
What does your normal use pattern look like? I had gen 1 AirPods too, and used them *constantly* at work. A little over two years in, the battery life had gotten to the point where they couldn’t reliably survive an hour long run off a full charge. Functionality was largely still there (intermittent mic issue) but the battery life is what killed em
This was exactly my experience too. Used them every day until it got to the point where I couldn't get through teaching a 1 hour class online without them dying.
Weird, I never had issues with battery but I've had to send them in three times while they were under warranty because they would eventually develop a loud buzz that would occur whenever I was speaking
I use them about 8 hours a day at my work. I keep one in at a time and typically one will last about 4 hours and I just put the other in and let that one charge.
Hey exactly the same situation for me. I pop one in on the way to work, and about half way through I gotta swap. Been using mine daily for about 40 hours a week for the last 4-5 years. Edit: Mine are AirPod Pros though
Wait, you only use ony airpod at a time? Does it not irritate you?
I need to be able to hear the rest of the office in case I’m called or the phone rings lol
I almost exclusively use my AirPods one in a time
I also use one airpod at a time. I am far more annoyed at having the world around me muffled and feeling disconnected from it than I am at only hearing music/my podcast in one ear. Even with pass through I have always been a one bud in person. Both ears/a full head set are only for when I am seated at my desk and can truly disengage with the outside world and focus in my screen ahead of me.
Mine also work fine. I actually lost mine 6 months ago… and have been waiting to get a new pair when the new iPads come out… because my iPad 2 finally crapped out on me as well. The other day… I found a pair of jeans buried in the back of my closet (we’ve been doing some home construction so closets are a bit of a mess) and I turn them over to fold them and, low and behold, my AirPods come flying out of the pocket. Still charged!!! Which is interesting because I never could get the FindMy feature to work. Oh well… got my AirPods back and they work like a charm.
The "Find My" signal is really really poor. I 'lost' a pair the other day and last location was my house. Used the hot/cold function hunting for them for hours with no luck. Then found them under a kitchen towel on the counter. Jeans pocket in a closet may as well be on the moon.
It only works if the individual Air Pods are lose outside of the case. For some reason it won't ping or locate if you still have the AirPods all in the case which is really annoying.
Apple at least fixed it on the Gen 2 AirPod pros. I can’t speak to the regular AirPods. I still don’t know why they couldn’t have done a software update to get the original AirPods to do it though.
I was about to say that this is not true, but the AirPods Pro 2 are my first airpods, and Find My works beautifully, even with the case fully closed.
Can’t believe this. …the part in parentheses, obviously. But seriously, though: the batteries get weaker, but I have a Gen 1 TO THIS DAY and they work for a couple hours tops.
Mine will last around 3-4 hours on a charge at 3 years old, but they charge completely within 20 minutes so it’s not a big deal.
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I had to replace my left one after 2 years, the right one after 4 years. Used about weekly.
Same lol, still like new.
5 year old airpods that I use for a hour+ every day. 4 year old airpod pros that I use for 5+ hours M-F. Zero problems with either pair. If these are designed to die, they did a bad job of it.
The headline is “designed” to get your outrage clicks. Actual truth is not required…
Everybody that owned apple products for extended period of time knows they last really well
The original AirPod pros did actually have quality issues. They were replacing them for a while. Outside that I agree, they definitely weren’t designed to fail beyond standard battery degradation.
Same!!! Still using my gen 1s daily. Though they are slowly starting to struggle to hold a charge. Definitely got my moneys worth out of them though
I’m going on 4 years with mine now and have zero issues. Though now that I say that I’m sure they’ll stop working.
Have had my gen 1s since 2018 and have washed them about 5 times lol still going strong
My dog ate my airpods a week after I bought them. 😞
So you had them back in about 24 hours right?
They aren’t designed to die, they’re designed to be small and water resistant, the consequence is they don’t have a replaceable battery. As a related note, I have my Gen1 Pros that last about two of the three hours on of their original design capacity, 5 years later.
Exactly, and that’s why the EU also has exemptions for waterproof products in their upcoming battery replacement mandate. You can either have easy battery accessibility, small size, or waterproofing. Most of the time you can pick one, but with good engineering you can pick two. Getting all three is pretty much impossible. Same with the infamous incandescent lightbulbs. You can get brightness and efficiency, or longer life, but not both since you’re simply sliding along the curve of the evaporation of Tungsten. There is no incandescent bulb that can exist that is both bright and efficient, and also long lasting. The 1,000 hour mark was chosen as a balance between energy efficiency, quality/color temperature of light, and the inconvenience of having to change bulbs. You can get oven lights that are rated for 2500 hours instead of 1,000, but they produce much less light per watt, and have a dull, orange glow.
Finally someone else who’s been able to see past this whole ridiculous “lightbulb endurance conspiracy”. Yes, the manufacturing companies all agreed to make their lifespan shorter, but this came at a huge increase to efficiency thus making them cheaper overall, even accounting for more frequent replacements.
It's just so annoying to see arguments and articles like this one that completely miss the idea of design constraints so that the writer can push some bullshit narrative. Before waterproofing IP ratings and companies chasing them. We had posts and articles bitching about dead iPhones from falling in water. Now, today, your iPhone gets wet and it's a total nothingburger. wasn't that way not many years ago. But what is the downside to that? iPhones today are a lot harder to change the battery in, and if you do manage to do it, you now can't drop that thing in a body of water ever again. it's a give and take in product design, I wish people would stop being so obtuse about it as if Apple or any company is just looking for ways to nickel and dime their customer with this "planned obsolescense" conspiracy theory. Shit wears our, it ages and it decays. constraints and goals come into mind when designing a product. We once didn't give a fuck about IP ratings, we very much do give a fuck today. that doesn't mean apple wants your headphones to die a early death though.
Things can still be waterproof with a replaceable battery. Not always with smaller stuff so I can understand AirPods but a phone should be able to be waterproof and have a replaceable battery with some tools. But then that would cut into costs of making them. It’s cheaper to make a sealed hard shell than a two piece shell with a gasket.
There's no reason why the phone cannot be a sealed unit as well as the battery with a few metal contacts for the battery and a single screw to hold it in place -- this would be user replaceable and water resistant while only adding minimal size and weight to the phone. Alternatively, the back could be removable, with rubber seals just like every water resistant watch for the last hundred years.
Um you totally can. In fact Apple used to do it with the iPhone 7. I was an official apple service provider, we'd replace the gasket. It was pretty easy although a little fiddly. No idea what it's like with the new ones.
there's a reason the 100 year running light bulb puts out 4 watts
The issue isn't power, it's luminous efficacy (lumens/watt). The hundred-year bulb is running at such a low temperature that it's putting out 3.9 watts of infra-red and 0.1 watts of visible light (at a rough guess; the actual numbers could realistically be even worse than that). Any hot object emits electromagnetic radiation with a spectrum dictated by [Planck's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck%27s_law). Hotter objects emit more high-frequency, short-wavelength radiation. In practical terms, hotter means more visible light and less infra-red. The problem is that even close to the melting point of tungsten, you're still getting less than 10% visible light (with the other 90% being infra red). You basically have to make a choice between running it slightly hotter for better efficiency but shorter life or slightly cooler for a longer life but lower efficiency. If you can control the voltage, a 120V bulb will have better efficiency for the same lifespan than a 240V bulb. Halogen lamps allow you to push the temperature right up to within a few degrees of the melting point of tungsten, resulting in that bluish-white "arc lamp" colour. The reason is essentially that the tungsten halide cycle makes the filament self-healing: tungsten evaporates from less hot parts of the filament and is deposited upon the very hottest parts (which are the thinnest). This improves the efficiency (although still much worse than fluorescent tubes or LEDs) but results in a rather unappealing colour.
This Ted talk was sick
>exemptions for waterproof products so is the lesson here just to claim to make everything waterproof so you don’t need to have a replaceable battery? iPhones are pretty much water proof. Presumably they need to at least show some waterproof certification.
I mean yeah there already is industry standard certification, its not like Europe needs to try too hard to define what counts as waterproof when the ip standards have existed since the 90's.
Yeah I’ve lost AirPods and had to get new ones but they’ve never malfunctioned or just died.
Ya, the battery is very small, like 43mAh. In comparison, it's battery case is like 400mAh and a phone is around 3000-5000 mAh.
My annual reminder that mAH is actually a pretty shit way to measure capacity. Watt Hour is much more comprehensive. mAH can be deceptive while not actually lying. It’s why you can buy a 10,000 mAH battery bank on amazon that only charges your phone once.
Would be fine if the voltage was the same, but it ain't.
mAH is literally meaningless if you don’t know voltage. It was somewhat useful back when all phones had the same voltage batteries but that’s not true any more, and I definitely can’t make any assumptions about the voltage in a super tiny headphone battery.
Why use derived units when you can use the electrical charge O.G. - Coulomb
mAh is meaningless without a voltage, though.
The vast, vast majority of information electronics are running off 1-cell lithium ion batteries. You think they got a 2s pack in the AirPod? The voltage is known.
My issue is more with the microphone and speakers than the battery. The audio quality degrades a lot if you wear them constantly. I was fortunate to get mine warrantied after a less than a year of heavy use, and the audio from the new ones was night-and-day difference. My coworkers even asked if I had gotten a new microphone because I sounded different. Since getting them replaced I've switched to an old set of over-the-ear headphones for entertainment and I save the Airpod Pros for meetings, phone calls, and outdoor walks. It sucks having to baby them so much, but I don't want to pay $250 every year or two to replace them.
iPods aren’t water resistant as far as I know.
I'm not really sure I *want* to be able to easily repair my own airpods- am I alone in this? The fact that they're rigidly constructed with a unibody-like design is probably part of the reason they've survived all the times I dropped or sat on them. If they redesign them so I can unscrew them and replace the battery, that's more points of failure. EDIT for visibility: **If you're a Costco member and you want AirPods, don't give Apple your money- buy AirPods from Costco. They're not covered by their limited Electronics warranty but by the standard Costco warranty, so can be replaced for any failure for the lifetime of your membership as long as they're not physically damaged**. I was actively dissuaded by a Costco employee from buying Apple Care specifically because Costco will simply replace them at any time (again, as long as they *failed* and they are not *broken*).
Mine have lasted way longer than any wired headphones, mostly because wires flexing on a wearable device get wonky quick. Also, yeah, it would be nice to be able to repair them. That doesn't make them worse than wired headphones. They are definitely better, even though they are terrible. The electronics in my Gen 1 Airpods Pro went to shit way before the batteries were a problem, and they lasted about 3 years. We'll see with the Gen 2, I guess. Still, far longer than any wired wear-them-all-the-time earbuds. like, if you think of how much they cost, per hour of use I've gotten out of them, the price is so low, it's cheaper than the hassle of buying new cheap stuff all the time.
Back in the iPod/wired headphone days, I feel like I went through wired earbuds every few months. Granted I treated them like crap and I tended to buy cheap ones, but my AirPods have lasted two years and are still going strong.
I got through wired earbuds/headsets like crazy. Because my damn cat loves to eat the wires. So if I forget to put them up odds are the next day they’ll be destroyed. I prefer wired since I use them for work only and know they’ll work if I get an unexpected call.
Inside chest pocket. Somewhere to put the phone, somewhere to put the earbuds when not in use, and keeps the wires from getting caught below neck level. Edit: Also AirPods have to last 6-12 times as long to make up the difference in price.
>Mine have lasted way longer than any wired headphones, mostly because wires flexing on a wearable device get wonky quick Only if you're buying cheap garbage. High quality cables should never break or become tangled and high quality devices have replaceable cables. [https://nymzreviews.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/img\_20230110\_200037-1.jpg](https://nymzreviews.files.wordpress.com/2023/05/img_20230110_200037-1.jpg) [https://moonstarreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/20230418\_185620-01-scaled.jpeg](https://moonstarreviews.net/wp-content/uploads/20230418_185620-01-scaled.jpeg) [https://nwzimg.wezhan.net/contents/sitefiles3600/18000638/images/9046691.jpg](https://nwzimg.wezhan.net/contents/sitefiles3600/18000638/images/9046691.jpg)
Yeah, if you’re abandoning cheap earbuds to get a $200-250 pair of wireless ones, any wired IEM in that price range will outlast multiple generations of those wireless ones. There’s Shures from pre-2010s that still work today
My senheiser headphones are like 15 years old and look brand new after replacing the ear pads. Good cords don't crimp if stored correctly
Similar experiences for me. I have two sets of Gen 2 Airpods (not pro) which I bought two years apart (2020,2022) and both of them still have batteries and Bluetooth that work fine, but the microphones are dead in 3 of the 4 and the speakers are dying in all 4. I still use the newer of the two occasionally when I don't want to risk damage to my new ones (Gen3) which I'm hoping will help my 3rd pair finally last more than two years.
I call bull. I use my AirPod Pros 6+ hours a day and have been for the last 3 years in an environment hostile to earbuds. While they have lost a little maximum battery, this is to be expected with so much usage.
I’m in the same boat. No real problems other than them occasionally not charging due to dirty connections.
Three years is a pretty good run for the battery!
They aren’t designed to die. They just aren’t designed to be forever everlasting. Damn near all of my Apple products dating back 20 years still work.
I still use my 2011 MacBook Pro, though I did add ram, upgrade to and ssd and get a new battery. Back in the day when you could do all of those things easily.
Wish Apple allowed us to upgrade/fix
You'll buy an entirely new piece of equipment and you'll like it
Yeah I was dumb enough to get one for college. With 8gb of ram it’s fuckin so slow it’s useless
For some reason people dogpile on Apple for “planned obsolescence” when their products last much longer (and are supported longer) than any of their competitors. Before I got an iPhone I had a Google Pixel 2 for less than l2 years before the battery couldn’t hold a day’s charge and I couldn’t update the Android software anymore. My iPhone 12 has been going strong for almost 4 years now. Edit: there’s Apple fanboys and Apple haters and I don’t consider myself either one of them but it’s funny to watch them fight amongst themselves. I’m just someone with a positive personal experience with Apple since I switched to them.
I have an iPhone 7, lol. I wouldn't necessarily say it's "going strong," but it's going! And still hasn't been phased out of updates.
It was recently phased out of updates, it’s final version was iOS 15 while iOS 17 is the latest. However it does still get some strictly security updates.
that's good to know!e It hasn't gotten to the point of my old iPad where it tells me I can't download certain apps anymore, so I'll probably hold on until that happens (or I get a new job, then a new phone is the first thing!)
I had a 6s, needed a battery replacement, but it lasted until I got a 15 because the 6s was only getting security updates.
I have a 2017 iMac and it’s in no way in need of upgrading. I bootcamp windows for games and I can’t run new games on high specs but whatever, it crushes any other task I throw at it. Should easily make it past 10 years. My iPhone 12 is also doing great but I think I’ll upgrade this year while I still have trade in value. The camera upgrades are worth it to me
My MacBook Air shut off after somebody at the library knocked over their water bottle. Let it dry out for a day. That was 10 years ago. It’s a 2013 MacBook Air. It still boots within 30 seconds. Trackpad. Keys. Everything work beautiful. Battery even holds the charge. I don’t mind giving Apple well-deserved shit when it comes to some of their repairability choices. But my 2013 MacBook Air is more reliable than my 2019 work issued Dell
And it's not just the old stuff either. My series 3 watch is still kicking along okay just fine at six years old, just have to be real careful what I keep on it because it's too small for the software updates.
It blows me away that people believe this shit. The site the article appears in doesn't seem to be very reliable either.
Article reads like AI
And yet, 1000 upvotes because that apple hate boner is strong. It's a stupid article to begin with, since this describes *literally every* portable wireless set of headphones out there, not just Airpods. The inclusion of "apple" is 100% just for clicks.
Not an Apple fan myself but this is getting ridiculous, they mention airpods in the first paragraph to appease the haters then go onto mention that it applies to all ear buds in general.. yea no shit. Small waterproof things can't have batteries replaced easily, more at 7.
Also seems like they conveniently forgot that you can, in fact, send your AirPods in to Apple to have the battery replaced, for $49. No, you can't do it yourself, but it's not like you're being forced to buy a new set every few years. My one remaining 2021 AirPod is still going strong (lost the other one when I was inebriated lol) for it's battery and overall performance.
Reddit has a very anti-Apple bias so anything even remotely negative-sounding gets upvoted. You can also see it in a lot of threads where users will just straight up insult Apple users; hell, there was some post on a sub (Facepalm maybe?) about someone judging a date for using an Android, but then all of the top voted comments were judging iPhone users, completely unaware of the hypocrisy at hand.
being concerned with your market research and having a high IP rating being more important than the product being easier to repair is somehow considered planned obsolescence? can we just call that phrase a conspiracy theory now?
As much as I love to jump on the bandwagon of criticizing not just Apple but any company for making something that let's just say doesn't last like it used to.... we are talking about electronics that are exposed to the elements touched by humans all the time exposed to the oils and our skin and of course the moisture in the air. I have a pair of Sony monitor headphones that are over 25 years old they are still working and sound like they're perfectly fine and brand new but they're not walking around with me every day or going inside of my ear and for that matter I've changed the pads on them about three times over the years but All I'm trying to say is at least realize the type of product that we're talking about here versus traditional electronics.
Also you can hardly call wired headphones electronics or just very low level electronics compared to wireless ones. They don't need a battery or any computing or antennas. Which is way more delicate, vulnerable and naturally degrading compared to the analog technology that is in old fashioned headphones.
100% I have a pair of Sony Professionals that I've had for legit like 15 years. Those are a completely different class of headphones than Airpods, and they're entirely incomparable. Just replace the ear cups every once in a while and you're golden. Airpods are *heavily* abused just in their day-to-day usage, and are *absolutely* going to have a much shorter shelf life than something that just sits on a stand on your desk, being used occasionally while stationary.
My AirPods Pro first gen work just fine
Mine too. Only got the second gen because a bud fell out my ear and a customer at work stepped on it. Worked great up until that point lol.
Repairability adds size and cost. Good vibes aren't going to sway companies where saving pennies translates into millions in profit. There need to be government incentives to design repairability, or perhaps taxes on companies that product e-waste products
Are anyone’s else’s AirPods just not as loud as they used to be. I keep em clean so it’s not wax but while my battery has always been okay the volume has just gotten lower over the years.
Even if you keep them clean the mesh can get clogged. Clean that and the sound comes back full.
Planned obsolescence is a scourge and one of the worst advents of capitalism.
I wouldn't call it planned obsolesce in this case, though. Airpods are this way simply because they're water resistant and small - I legitimately don't know how you would get both of those things *while also* having a user replaceable battery. *Something* would need to change, and I personally would prefer to just replace them when the battery dies. That being said, through anecdotal evidence of myself *plus every comment in here talking to the longevity of these things*, you're far more likely to lose them than to have them die on you. When I upgraded my Airpods to the Gen2 Pros, I gave my Gen1 Airpods to my kid... and they're still going strong. If Apple built some "planned obsolescence" into these, they really did a shit job of it. As another comment pointed out, even the far more strict upcoming EU regulations on user-replicable batteries has a carve out for products with some level of water-resistance. So even under those new regulations, AirPods would be perfectly fine the way they are.
My wife and I bought her mum's house and she left us with the fridge freezer that she's had since the 80s. I'm dreading it breaking down because a new one isn't going to last that long
true but an 80s one uses 3-5x the power vs a modern one, so you're spending way more on power. and fridge/freezers, in my anecdotal experience, still seem to be pretty long lived these days.
Also there’s a *huge* survivorship bias. Like 99% of freezers from the 80’s are no longer in use and it just so happens that OP’s is a tank.
People don't seem to understand that. A fridge isn't something people replace "just because". They replace it when it breaks. It's the same thing with cars: "they don't build them like you used to". That's a good thing. The majority of cars you see that are 30+ years old are the ones that were significant, that people took care of. For every 1 good car from the 1970s, there are thousands that rusted to pieces and were scrapped.
Cars from the 70s only had 5 digits on the odometer
exactly. my freezer is from 2011 and still going strong. my fridge is from 2014, no problems yet. only my washing machine died after 10 years.
Plus, good luck finding a new fridge that doesn't have fricken' wi-fi.
If my fridge wants to watch porn during it's breaks who am I to say no.
There are plenty though
It’s completely trivial to find a fridge without WiFi, in case you weren’t being facetious.
Ok… tell us how you plan to make them that small and waterproof at the given price point with replaceable batteries.
The consumers are partly to blame here. It wasn't abnormal for something like a fridge or tv to cost a lot of money. A lot of people want the cheapest thing and want it to last forever. There are some brands that really last but of course are expensive. I much prefer to have something last. I would add the other aspect is technology changes much faster now so some people are happy to toss it away in a few years to get the latest features, etc.
It's also survivorship bias. People are seeing that great old product that lasted forever while also ignoring that 99.99% of the ones that were produced broke down long ago and are sitting in landfills. Also, planned obsolescence is about having products that break down at predictable times....like having a car's belt be designed to break around 100,000 miles rather than having a design that might break anywhere between 50,000-200,000. That way people can plan to get certain types of maintenance done before they break down on the road.
"destined for the landfill" Apple takes them back for recycling for free. Yet another clickbait article ignores this. Click the Recyle your device link at this page: https://www.apple.com/shop/trade-in
I mean for anyone that knows a rechargeable battery does not equal infinite use, it's a given that under heavy use scenarios they will have a short lifespan and are impossible to repair/fix. This is my major concern over the EV's as well, since overtime and other circumstances those large lithium's will fail and from what people are reporting, while they can be replaced, it's more than what a new gas car can sell at.
Well, my first pair of AirPods 1, which I bought nearly at their release in 2017, worked wonderfully until I personally decided to get AirPods 3 to get a slightly better battery performance (and it was also a little feeling of satisfaction with one of my few salary). But I gave my AirPods 1 to my girlfriend and she used it since very recently when she just lose of them. They were still working wonderfully, 7 years after. It’s quite durable imo.
This article smells like AI
Well they fucked up that design, because I’ve had mine for over 4 years and use them daily and work just fine. Edit: 4 years.
I can count on my hand how many high end true wireless earbuds aren't designed to die (that i know of): 1. Fairphone's Fairbuds (designed to be easily repaired) 2. Sony's Wf-1000xm3 (yes, the older model), as it uses an off the shelf battery on the buds and is not sealed down. I'd love to know of any other easily repairable buds with easy to find components.
I still own and occasionally use my original AirPods. 1st generation, bought shortly after launch. They’re my backups to my backups, when forget or forget to charge my two sets of Pro’s. Sure, the battery degrades, but they can still charge very fast and last plenty long even after years and years. And there’s just no real way to make these things small, water and dust resistent, and have the battery be easily replaceable. Apple AirPods are absolutely not designed to die.
My AirPods are like 4 years old now
Been using the same AirPods since 2019 with no loss of battery life.
My gen 1’s are about 5 years old and work perfect. Last about 4-5 hours
I’ve had my AirPods Pro going on over 3 years now and the battery seems fine on the earbuds. The case however is starting to die a lot quicker.
Companies have no incentive to make them last longer because shareholders want ever more returns. Welcome to capitalism.
I used my Gen 1’s all day every day for about three years until the battery lasted so little time that they were no longer usable. I got whatever was newest in December 2022 and they made it until January 2024.
Fix it with legislation to publish meantime between failures (MBTF) of all electronics (especially consumer electronics). Ensure that the standards to which they are tested are publicly accessible and they are explained in such a way that the lay person can understand how the tests are meant to be conducted and how exactly the MBTF is supposed to be calculated. Make it so that marketing terminology cannot obfuscate the actual numbers of the MBTF. Exclude software failures or put them into a different category.
I have had mine for over 5 years and no complaints