Apple's AirPods will start shipping Wednesday but the durability tests and teardowns have already been performed on the product and are available on the Internet. Surprisingly, the durability tests have revealed that the wireless earphones from Apple are able to withstand falls from several feet above the ground as well as shows resistance to water. The teardowns have further revealed that AirPods come with a tiny 93 milliwatt battery and pack the components in a very compact manner inside.
Even though Apple has not marketed the AirPods as water resistant earphones, they were able to come out unscathed from a washing cycle inside a washing machine, as shown in the video posted on YouTube channel EverythingApplePro. As per the tester, even after being through the washing cycle, the AirPods sounded just as good as they did before.
In the durability tests, the pair of earphones were dropped, with and without the case, from several different heights but apart from a few scuffs on the case, the falls couldn't seemingly damage the AirPods in any way. The tester claimed that there was no noticeable difference in the sound from earphones after the drop tests were performed.
In the meanwhile, in an iFixit teardown of the AirPods that also reported the earphones are difficult to recycle, it was found that the wireless earphones come with a tiny 93 milliwatt battery. The circuit board, which includes a W1 chip among other components, is located at the rounded part of the earpiece.
The teardown of the case for AirPods further revealed that just like the ear-pieces, the case comes with jam-packed components as well. As components are glued together in an extremely compact manner, iFixit gave AirPods a repairability score of zero out of ten to indicate that its virtually impossible to repair the wireless earphones if they get damaged.
Notably, even though AirPods showed durability during the tests, they popped out of their case and bounced-off the ground several times during the tests. This indicates that it might be fairly easy to lose them if they do fall from users' pocket.
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