- iFixit, a repair website and parts store, has finished its highly anticipated teardown of the AirPods Max over-ear headphones from Apple.
- The verdict: a 6 out of 10 repairability score. That's surprising, considering iFixit has never given a single point to Apple in this category.
- iFixit also tore apart comparable Bose and Sony headsets to examine the differences between all three—from the inside.
iFixit, the popular repair advice website and parts store, has torn apart both the AirPods and AirPods Pro earbuds in the past, but has never given Apple glowing reviews for its audio products. In fact, the reputable website hasn't even awarded Apple one measly point in a repairability score—but that changes now.
In a new teardown post, iFixit has given Apple's new over-ear headphones, the AirPods Max, a repairability score of 6 out of 10, a surprisingly high rating since the site gives out 10s for the easiest-to-repair devices. The authors even said the repair process was "surprisingly painless."
This teardown is pretty badass. Not only iFixit strip the headphones down to their micron-scale screws, but it also worked with the outside firm Creative Electron to blast the AirPods Max with X-rays, all the way down to every last tiny detail.
In the image below, for example, you can see two battery cells, large dual-ring speaker driver magnets, speaker units that look to be held in place with screws, tiny alignment magnets, brackets for microphones, and a few solder joints and wires.
iFixit/Creative Electron
If you're interested in buying AirPods Max, but have been holding out due to their considerable cost ($550), you'll want to check out the full teardown, especially if you're planning on making any future repairs yourself. If you like what you see, who knows? Maybe you could save money in the long run by skipping out on the Apple Care+ package and those sky-high fees at the repair shop.
In the meantime, here are the five coolest, weirdest, and most noteworthy things we found in the teardown.
1) The digital crown is massive.
iFixit
The digital crown in the AirPods Max headphones controls the volume and playback controls—kind of like the buttons on the side of your Beats over-ear headphones. As iFixit puts it, this digital crown has "grown to three times its original size." It does look pretty massive for a digital crown, as compared to the ones on various models of Apple Watch.
Our friends at Best Products, who reviewed the AirPods Max headphones, absolutely rave about this strangely large knob, calling it "hands-down the coolest, most convenient tool for controlling playback and volume I have experienced in headphones to date." They even say it's fun to fiddle around with this thing just to hear the digital crown's audible clicking sounds.
2) There are pentalobe screws beneath the ear cushions.
iFixit
If you don't know what a pentalobe screw is, grab your iPhone case, take off the case, and tilt the bottom of the phone up to eye level. On either side of the lightning charging port, there are two minuscule screws that each include five points. They sort of look like a star, or a flower, depending on how good your vision is.
Apple introduced the "pentalobe security screw" in 2009 for the 15-inch MacBook Pro and has since used the five-pointed tamper-resistant system in other products—but not without criticism. At the time, some experts saw the new screws as an attempt to lock people out of their devices. That's no longer the case, as third parties like iFixit have developed pentalobe screwdrivers and toolkits.
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iFixit seems to have a love/hate relationship with the pentalobe screws. On the one hand, they're better than glue or some other adhesive, which makes a teardown into a near-medical procedure (as in the case of taking apart regular AirPods), scalpel and all. On the other hand, they're a total pain.
"This is where the fun stops and the work begins," iFixit notes. "Those screws got our hopes up, but they behave ... strangely. They turn a little ways in each direction, and then stop. If you forcibly remove them like we did, you'll be rewarded with the sound of loose pieces rattling around inside the ear cups ... which remain sealed shut. Huh?"
Apparently, you're not supposed to remove the screws, but rather, rotate them about a quarter of the way to release a locking wedge on the other side. Who knew?
3) Both battery cells live in the same ear cup.
iFixit
As you might have noticed in the X-ray image above, both battery cells live in the right ear cup of the AirPods Max. They're tethered together with a single cable, and much to the relief of the iFixit staff, they're fastened with screws and not adhesive. The batteries provide power through a single iPhone-style pop connector, no soldering required.
"You could almost say it was easy," iFixit notes. "Imagine that—easily replacing a consumable component, instead of throwing the whole device away."
🎧 Can't find AirPods Max? Try one of the originals.
4) The headband hinge mechanism is wild.
iFixit
When the AirPods Max headphones first debuted, critics thought the headband portion looked really strange, even if the mesh canopy was meant to evenly distribute weight. Now that the reviews are in, it seems like people are enjoying that connecting portion between the two ear cups.
But to understand how the ear cups tilt and spin, you have to look inside. And what iFixit found is distinctly Apple: a sophisticated, albeit over-engineered solution.
"Apple's electromechanical hinge hardware is both intricate and overbuilt, and might make the AirPods Max's price tag a little easier to swallow," iFixit says. "Apple uses a wraparound flex cable in the rotating portion of the joint, with some clever routing and built-in strain relief—then switches over to spring contacts for the connection to the headband. What a flex."
iFixit says this could potentially lead to fewer power failures and less wear on the cables. Still, that's with the caveat that wear and tear is unpredictable.
5) When you remove the headband, there's a baby lightning connector inside.
Okay, not really—but it truly looks like it, as one wise Twitter user pointed out:
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Despite the complexity of the joint, iFixit says you can take the headband apart from the AirPods Max earcups with just a simple old SIM card removal tool or even a paperclip. Yes, a paperclip.
"We were as shocked as you are," iFixit says in summation. "Did Apple put this tiny hole here with repair in mind? Portability? Both? Is $550 starting to seem ... reasonable?"
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