After the controversy of the disposable AirPods, the question now arose as to whether Apple or, more precisely, its subsidiary Beats would use the same construction techniques that could not be noticed in their other fully wireless headsets, the newly released ones. Powerbeats Pro. Well, yesterday iFixit finally put his hands on the animals and gave his verdict: a little better, but still beeem bad.
Opening the Powerbeats Pro is a little less destructive than dissecting the AirPods, but not at all pleasant: you need to apply a good deal of heat, precision stylus, blades and sheer brute force to clear the inside of the headphones that, as usual. , has glue and welds on all sides.
The phone's logic board, which houses the H1 chip, is folded (or, more specifically, separated into three parts connected by flex cables), and the battery is the same found in Samsung's (highly repairable) Galaxy Buds: each side has a 200mWh, more than double the 93mWh of the AirPods. The problem is that here, too, the batteries are soldered to the board, making replacements basically impossible.
The Powerbeats Pro audio drivers are similar to AirPods and are equally inaccessible: because of the internal structure of the cards, cables and battery, it was only possible to access them by cutting some of the wires connecting the components, effectively killing the headphones. According to iFixit, the difference in audio between Powerbeats Pro and AirPods is mainly due to their acoustic construction (Beats headphones use a lot more silicone and reverb instruments), not the drivers themselves.
The case of the headphones is equally prickly to open, requiring considerable force to access its bowels. The glue is constantly inside, including the case's 1.3Wh battery. Nothing is easy to replace.
In the end, iFixit gave grade 1 (out of 10 possible points) to the Powerbeats Pro in their "reparability" index which, albeit horrible, is better than the grade 0 received by the AirPods. The site pondered that the headset battery, which is of an easily found model, can, with some effort, be replaced; It has also been considered that they can be opened without a complete destruction of their internal components (cosmetic damage only).
Still, the situation is not good: the internal components are all connected by non-releasable cables, the entire structure is glue and solder-based, and the headset case is almost inaccessible, iFixit says.
