Fairphone’s Fairbuds are true wireless earbuds with repairable design and user-replaceable batteries

Dutch smartphone maker Fairphone has made a name for itself by building sustainable products that are meant to last a long time. That’s because the company’s phones have user-repairable designs and the company sells spare parts (and sometimes even hardware upgrades).

Last year the company expanded into the wireless audio space with the launch of premium over-ear, wireless, noise-cancelling headphones called the Fairbuds XL that also have a modular, repairable design. Now the company is doing it again, but this time smaller. The Fairbuds are a pair of true wireless earbuds featuring sustainable design elements.

The Fairbuds have the sort of features we’ve come to expect from premium earbuds. They’re noise-cancelling Bluetooth 5.3 earbuds with support for wind noise reduction and an environmental noise-cancelling feature that sets noise reduction depending on your environment.

Fairphone’s earbuds have six microphones, 11mm drivers, and an IP54 rating for water (and sweat) resistance. They also support multipoint connectivity, which means you can connect the earbuds to two different devices at the same time (like your phone and your laptop).

The earbuds offer up to 6 hours of battery life and they come with a charging case that gives you another 20 hours of use between charges. And Fairphone offers iOS and Android apps that let you adjust EQ, install firmware updates, and make other changes.

Other features include automatic play and pause when the Fairbuds are removed from your ears, capacitive touch controls, and three different ear tips sizes included in the box.

But the key thing that makes these earbuds different from the competition is that they’re designed to be repairable rather than replaceable. Lose just one earbud? Fairphone will let you buy a single earbud without paying again for a full set with a case. Is your battery life degrading a few years after purchase? Fairphone will sell battery replacements and let you swap out the batteries in your earbuds or charging case.

All told, the company offers seven repairable/replaceable components for the Fairbuds:

• Earbud (left)
• Earbud (right)
• Earbud battery and silicon ring kit
• Earbud tips
• Charging case outer shell
• Charging case core
• Charging case battery

Since one of the main reasons people tend to replace older gear is that the batteries no longer hold a charge, the inclusion of user-replaceable batteries alone could dramatically extend the longevity of the Fairbuds. And it’s particularly impressive that Fairphone was able to include user-replaceable batteries in something as small as a set of true wireless earbuds, while still offering IP54 water resistance.

It apparently took the company a while to achieve, because these are actually the company’s second set of true wireless earbuds. The Fairphone TWS Earbuds launched a few years ago as a pretty standard set of earbuds that lacked the repairability factor of the new models, and only really stood out thanks to Fairphone branding and the use of recycled materials. Those earbuds have now been discontinued, but Fairphone continues to offer spare single earbuds, charging cases, and replacement tips.

The company also offers a 3-year warranty for its new Fairbuds and notes that they’re manufactured using:

• 70% of all materials used in production are fair and recycled (fair = ethically sourced).
• 100% of rare earth elements used are recycled.
• Plastics used in the Fairbuds and their charging case are recycled.

The Fairbuds are available now in Europe for €149. Unfortunately, like most Fairphone products, they have yet to launch outside of Europe.