or years, buying a pair of Apple AirPods meant accepting an expiration date. Once those microscopic internal batteries died, you were supposed to toss the entire wireless set into the garbage and buy a fresh pair. Repair outfit iFixit consistently slapped successive generations of the earbuds with an abysmal 0/10 repairability score, essentially treating them as sealed-up electronic waste by design.
That dynamic shifted slightly with the teardown of the fifth-generation model. As demonstrated in the teardown video from iFixit, a battery swap inside the fifth-generation earbuds is now actually possible without whole-scale destruction of the housing.
A bit of gentle heat allows for the glued-together earbud to cleanly separate.
Once opened, you find a socketed coin cell inside instead of a permanently welded mess of wires and glue. However, Apple still managed to slip in a classic bit of proprietary friction: the polarity on these sockets differs between the left and right earbud, meaning you cannot casually swap replacement cells between sides without paying close attention to what you are doing.
The Charging Case Catch
Before you pop champagne for a sweeping victory in the right-to-repair movement, look at the other half of the package. This new internal design does not carry over to the charging case. Getting to the battery inside the fifth-generation case still requires the physical destruction of the plastic shell.
Because the case remains entirely disposable, iFixit gave this generation of AirPods a generous 2/10 repairability score. That is a microscopic step up, especially considering that last year's models made the teardown team genuinely furious.
If you expect a gadget that you can easily maintain at home and keep running for years to come, AirPods are still very much not built for you. Regulators pushed Apple to make a token gesture, but your local repair shop is still going to look at you sideways if you walk in asking to change your headphone batteries.