They should focus on electric cars. Replacing tiny batteries in thin phones or thinner headphones is silly to legislate compared to gigantic batteries in big cars. The rest of the car could easily have a 20 year life with no internal combustion engine, but most get scrapped after 6-8 years.
If they want to pretend that they’re saving the planet with legislation, go for the real volume.
User replaceable batteries in earbuds would make them thicker and heavier - exactly what consumers say they don’t want.
Electric Cars have replaceable batteries? No one’s throwing away that much money in precious metals. Recycling companies are spinning up to handle EV batteries as they start to fail, which they haven’t in large numbers yet.
Yeah every EV has a replaceable battery, lol. The actual issue is the amount of shops that do battery replacement is little to none. On top of that, EV battery recycling isn’t at the scale it will need to be in 10-15 years. Those issues will solve themself after a while though.
I’ve been rocking my Sony WH-1000XM3’s for going on 5 years now and have had absolutely zero issues with battery life (or anything else for that matter). I wear them several hours a day, every work day for Zoom calls, etc. They’ve traveled with me and are great for flights.
I’d buy another pair (of the newer model) in a heartbeat.
That is encouraging but the fact remains that there is a point of failure in the battery which has a known lifetime of charge cycles. I’m wouldn’t tell you not to buy them I’m just a stickler for that kind of thing I guess.
That’s fair. Getting 5+ years of heavy use (thousands of hours) out of a $400 pair of headphones is worth the investment to me. Not worth it to everyone, though.
We need a new list every year because the fucking things don’t have replaceable batteries :/
Maybe EU will make a legislation about headphone batteries too…
They should focus on electric cars. Replacing tiny batteries in thin phones or thinner headphones is silly to legislate compared to gigantic batteries in big cars. The rest of the car could easily have a 20 year life with no internal combustion engine, but most get scrapped after 6-8 years.
If they want to pretend that they’re saving the planet with legislation, go for the real volume.
User replaceable batteries in earbuds would make them thicker and heavier - exactly what consumers say they don’t want.
Electric Cars have replaceable batteries? No one’s throwing away that much money in precious metals. Recycling companies are spinning up to handle EV batteries as they start to fail, which they haven’t in large numbers yet.
Yeah every EV has a replaceable battery, lol. The actual issue is the amount of shops that do battery replacement is little to none. On top of that, EV battery recycling isn’t at the scale it will need to be in 10-15 years. Those issues will solve themself after a while though.
I’ve been rocking my Sony WH-1000XM3’s for going on 5 years now and have had absolutely zero issues with battery life (or anything else for that matter). I wear them several hours a day, every work day for Zoom calls, etc. They’ve traveled with me and are great for flights.
I’d buy another pair (of the newer model) in a heartbeat.
Same here- best headphones I’ve ever owned!
🙋🏻♂️ Sony WH-1000XM2 owner here, and I’m equally as happy. They’re still going strong after years of heavy daily use.
That is encouraging but the fact remains that there is a point of failure in the battery which has a known lifetime of charge cycles. I’m wouldn’t tell you not to buy them I’m just a stickler for that kind of thing I guess.
That’s fair. Getting 5+ years of heavy use (thousands of hours) out of a $400 pair of headphones is worth the investment to me. Not worth it to everyone, though.
Are they really impossible to replace, though?
Probably not.
But most wireless headphones would be destroyed in the process of taking them apart.
I imagine some of the larger models above have (skilled) user replaceable batteries.
They are not designed to be replaced