The right to repair has been a hot topic for several years, hitting a kind of critical mass with domestic and international legislation. Supporters note that these proposals give users more control over their property, while extending the life of products and reducing e-waste.
Fairphone is perhaps the most prominent hardware company to make repair the foundation of the consumer electronics design ethos rather than an afterthought. To date, the European startup has released several headphones and a pair of in-ear headphones. This week, it adds headphones to that list.
While Bluetooth buds have quickly become a commodity, user repairability was a non-starter due to their small size. They’re also relatively cheap to produce, making it easy to throw away a pair when they stop working for some reason. If you’re going to make a product like this repairable, you have to make it a core feature — which, thankfully, is kind of Fairphone’s whole deal.
Image Credits: Fairphone (screenshot)
In this case, the company focused on battery life. Users can easily open the buds and the case to remove the batteries after they have worn out. The company is calling Fairbuds, “the world’s most repairable premium headphones”. They are certainly easier to open and exchange parts than competing products from the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The €149 ($162) price puts them somewhere in the mid-range of the headphone world. You can, of course, get a lot less buds these days. And while the company touts features like active noise cancellation and 11mm titanium drivers, the truth is that repairability and battery life should be high on your list of requirements to choose from an extremely crowded field.
In the world of consumer electronics, the right to repair has largely focused on handheld devices and computers. Given the lower price and smaller footprint, it seems unlikely that they will find their way into many laws in the near future. But anything that can help reduce e-waste and give users more control over these products is probably a net positive.
