Bang & Olufsen announced its new $499 luxury earphones Beoplay Eleven in November, touting, among other things, a replaceable battery “for sustainability” and alignment with the EU’s pressing device repairability requirements. did. But iFixit’s teardown tells a more complicated story of actually replacing the battery, showing that the process of simply opening the case is “a very tedious and labor-intensive task, even for trained technicians.” ” is explained. And inside, the battery is secured to other components in a way that requires heat, which itself would not comply with upcoming EU regulations. Considering all the work involved, the earbuds earned an abysmal 1/10 on iFixit’s repairability scorecard.
Bang & Olufsen said the earbuds’ design “enables service-based battery replacement,” but as iFixit points out, this is not intended to be a do-it-yourself repair at home. Suggests. In the end, it was found that it was possible to disassemble one of the earbuds without damaging the internal electronics, but the arduous disassembly process required a battery replacement at a B&O service center. But there are questions about how feasible and sustainable battery replacement is. iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari wrote that after opening the case and discovering “plastic weld marks that prevent access to the battery,” “At least the plastic housing must be discarded completely before battery replacement service is available.” ” he says in the video.
“I would love to see B&O’s process for replacing these batteries,” Mokhtari wrote in a blog post. “I’d be willing to bet it’s not cheap or useless, but I’d love to be proven wrong.” In the teardown, the Beoplay 11 internally reveals the 2022 Beoplay EX’s ” It was also revealed that it was a carbon copy. “The removable film on the back of each earbud also says ‘Beoplay EX’ instead of ‘Beoplay Eleven,'” Mokhtari wrote. oh yeah.
