Apple made the AirPods battery removable, and iFixit still scores them 2 out of 10

For a decade, iFixit has scored every pair of AirPods at zero out of 10 for repairability, a rating the teardown itself calls well deserved. The fifth generation breaks that streak with a 2 out of 10, the first nonzero mark the earbuds have received, and the reason is a battery that can finally be unplugged instead of destroyed.

Two points out of ten is still a failing grade, and iFixit’s teardown explains why. The earbuds can now be opened and their batteries swapped by a patient technician, but Apple sells no replacement cells, publishes no repair manual, and offers no Self Service Repair route for the product.

Pronged batteries replace soldered leads

The change that moved the score sits inside each earbud. According to iFixit’s own teardown write-up, the batteries use pronged connections where earlier generations used soldered leads, and the team reported that commonly available tools were enough to reach the battery, a hair dryer and a clamp among them. The method, with the hair dryer on its lowest setting, is a clamp, careful heating and patient prying, as The Register summarised the process. iClarified adds that heat and careful prying are needed to avoid melting the plastic, and that one earlier attempt, made through the stem, caused damage before the team settled on the approach that worked. After a decade of zero scores, a path to the battery that needs only household-grade tools is the main improvement.

The design is a partial return. MacRumors reported that the pronged battery resembles the one in the AirPods 3 rather than the AirPods 4, and iFixit described the battery as coming out with “a nifty pair of tongs” and being “intuitive to unplug.” The AirPods 4 dropped that connector design entirely, and the AirPods 3 used it but could not be opened reliably, so the fifth generation combines the unpluggable cell with an earbud body that yields to heat and patience. Technicians can replace the battery “with a decent success rate,” in the words MacRumors relayed from the teardown video.

A removable battery that still earns only 2 out of 10

A battery that unplugs does not make a repairable product, and the details show the gap. The left and right earbuds use batteries with reversed polarity and prongs welded slightly off-centre, so the two cells are not interchangeable. Any future replacement will have to be matched to the correct earbud, which complicates stocking spares and raises the odds of a mismatched order for a first-time repairer, since the prongs differ between the two sides of a single pair.

Availability is the larger obstacle, and the Register’s own subhead, which credits replaceable batteries with lifting the score from zero to two out of ten, says nothing of supply. iClarified reported that replacement cells are not yet commercially available and that Apple offers no replacement batteries or manuals, nor a repair path through its Self Service Repair program. A swappable part with no supply behind it leaves the owner of a worn pair with the same practical choice as before, which is to replace the earbuds. iFixit’s finding that no replacement batteries exist, is the reason the score stops at two.

The charging case remains sealed

The case is where the score gets pulled back down. iFixit wrote that opening it involved “prying, cursing, cutting, more cursing, and an accidental stab wound,” and the team destroyed its case unit reaching the battery. In the account relayed by iClarified, tight seams resisted opening even with a rework station, and plastic welds stand in for screws. The teardown called the case “still a disaster” in MacRumors’ summary, a verdict that leaves one half of the product repairable in principle and the other half effectively sealed.

A low bar, cleared by a small margin

The Register framed the generation as “slightly less hostile to repair,” and its review concluded the AirPods 5 are “not as disappointing as they could have been” while remaining far from genuinely repairable compared with alternatives such as Fairphone’s Fairbuds. Cult of Mac put it as “less impossible to fix.”

The score captures that position well, and the sources agree on its meaning from iFixit’s teardown through The Register’s review to MacRumors’ summary. Moving from zero to two means iFixit found the first real path to a battery swap, and not much more: the earbuds open without ruin, the batteries unplug, and everything else that makes a product repairable, from parts to documentation to an accessible case, is still absent. The next signal will come from whether Apple supplies the batteries and the manual that the teardown found missing, since without those the removable design remains something only skilled repairers with spare time can use.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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