AirPods 5 Finally Escape the Zero: iFixit Gives Them 2 Out of 10

Since Apple launched the original AirPods in 2016, the teardown specialists at iFixit have dismantled every generation of the company's wireless earbuds, and every single one has earned the same score: zero out of ten. Batteries welded in with strong adhesive, components soldered together, housings that could not be opened and reassembled without damage. AirPods were the poster child of the disposable gadget era.

That streak broke on September 29, when iFixit published its teardown of the AirPods 5 and handed them a score of 2 out of 10. By any honest standard, two out of ten is still a failure. But for AirPods, it is the best repairability score in the product line's history, and the details of the teardown show exactly where the progress is, and where it stops cold.

What changed inside the earbuds

The single most important change is the battery. Apple brought back a pronged battery design that unplugs instead of relying on soldered leads. The AirPods 3 used a similar pronged cell, but their casings could not be opened reliably without damage, and the AirPods 4 dropped the prongs entirely. This time, both buds opened cleanly around the speaker driver after warming with a hair dryer, and their batteries lifted out after the adhesive was removed.

iFixit reported that the battery is, in its words, intuitive to unplug. The teardown team even managed a DIY-friendly attempt using an ordinary hair dryer on a low setting plus a clamp to hold the earbud steady. Their verdict: skilled technicians and even intrepid DIYers should be able to replace the earbud batteries with a decent success rate. For a product family that has never permitted even that, it is a meaningful shift.

The catches: polarity, parts, and the case

Before anyone buys a soldering iron, the caveats. The batteries in the left and right earbuds are not interchangeable. Their polarity is reversed and the contact prongs sit slightly off-center, so a left-earbud cell cannot simply be moved into a right earbud. Replacement cells are not yet available for purchase, and buyers will need to pick the correct side when they eventually reach the market.

The bigger caveat is the charging case. iFixit's verdict there was blunt: it is still a disaster. The case's tight seams resisted opening even with a rework station, and the enclosure was destroyed before the battery could be reached. Inside, melted plastic welds stood where removable screws might have made disassembly feasible. The earbuds have taken a real step forward; the case remains designed around replacement rather than repair.

Two out of ten is still a failure by any honest standard. But after a decade of zeros, a failure with removable batteries counts as news.

Why a tiny score actually matters

Battery degradation is the most common reason wireless earbuds die. The tiny cells in earbuds cycle hard and wear out in two to four years, long before the drivers or electronics fail. When the battery is sealed inside, the whole product becomes a consumable, and the earbuds join a mountain of electronic waste that has been growing for a decade.

The timing of Apple's change is unlikely to be a coincidence, in this reporter's analysis. The European Union's battery regulation requires that batteries in portable devices be removable and replaceable by early 2027, and manufacturers across the industry are adjusting designs ahead of the deadline. Apple has not said the AirPods 5 redesign is connected to that rule, but a pronged, unpluggable battery is exactly the kind of design the regulation is pushing toward. Policy, in other words, is doing work that a decade of criticism could not.

The rest of the repair picture is still bleak

It would be a mistake to read the AirPods 5 score as a turnaround. Apple offers no replacement batteries and no repair manuals for the earbuds, and its Self Service Repair program provides no repair path for them at all. Anyone attempting the battery swap iFixit demonstrated is working without official parts or documentation. That is the gap right-to-repair advocates keep pointing at: design changes help, but repair requires parts, tools, and manuals too.

The contrast cases show how much room remains. iFixit awarded Google's Pixel Watch a 9 out of 10, after a reviewer successfully disassembled and reassembled one, battery and screen both, with patience and basic tools. That score proves waterproofing and miniaturization are not automatic excuses for unrepairable hardware. And at the other end of the earbud market, repair-focused brands like Fairphone build earbuds around modular, replaceable batteries as the default, not the exception.

Even within Apple's own lineup this month, the picture is mixed. The new Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 scored 4 out of 10 in the same week of teardowns, with iFixit arguing that Apple still withholds the parts, tools, and manuals that repair and DIY shops need (a story we covered in our Apple Watch teardown piece). The company that wants credit for durability and long software support has not yet reconciled that with repairability.

What you can do with your earbuds

If you own AirPods, the practical takeaway is modest but real. Run them until the batteries fade, which is what most people do anyway, and know that the newest model is, for the first time, a candidate for a battery refresh rather than a replacement. When buying, check how to read repairability scores before assuming a higher price buys a longer life. And when the case battery dies, remember the case is still the weakest link in the whole system: it is the part most likely to send an otherwise working product to the drawer of dead gadgets.

A decade of zeros trained everyone to treat wireless earbuds as disposable. Two out of ten does not fix that. But the floor has finally moved, and in a category this sealed shut, a moved floor is where change starts.