Last November, Bang & Olufsen announced that it was promoting, among other things, its replaceable batteries “for sustainability” and alignment with impending device repair requirements in the European Union. but Disassembly tells a more complicated story about actually replacing those batteries, describing the unboxing process as “an extremely tedious and labor-intensive task… even for trained technicians.” Inside, the battery is bonded to other components in ways that require heat to remove, which in itself does not comply with upcoming EU rules. Given all the work that went into it, the earbuds scored a very poor score of 1/10 on iFixit’s repair scorecard.
Bang & Olufsen said the earbuds’ design “allows for battery replacement via service,” which, as iFixit points out, indicates that this isn’t intended to be a fix you can do yourself at home. It eventually turns out that it’s possible to disassemble an earbud without damaging any of the electronics inside, but the tedious disassembly calls into question the feasibility — and sustainability — of battery replacement, even when performed at a B&O service center. After opening the box and finding “a plastic welding tag blocking access to the battery,” iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari noted in video “At a minimum, any battery replacement service will need to remove the plastic casing entirely.”
“I would like to see B&O’s process for changing these batteries,” Mokhtari wrote in a blog post. “I’m willing to bet it’s neither cheap nor waste-free, but I’d love to be proven wrong.” The teardown also revealed that the Beoplay Eleven is a “carbon copy” of the 2022 Beoplay EX internally. “Even the peel-off film on the back of each earbud says Beoplay EX, not Beoplay Eleven,” Mokhtari wrote. OK.