Bang & Olufsen’s new ‘battery swappable’ headphones don’t seem very repairable

Bang & Olufsen has announced its back in November, touting its replaceable batteries “for sustainability” and compliance with upcoming EU device repair requirements, among other things. But an teardown tells a more complicated story about actually replacing these batteries, describing the process of simply opening the case as “a very difficult and time-consuming task…even for a trained technician.” And inside, the battery is attached to other components in ways that require heat to remove, which in itself would not comply with upcoming EU rules. Considering all the work that went into it, the headset received an abysmal 1/10 on iFixit’s repairability scorecard.

Bang & Olufsen said the headset’s design “allows for service-replaceable battery replacement,” which, as iFixit notes, suggests this isn’t meant to be a do-it-yourself repair at home. It ended up being possible to take one of the headphones apart without damaging any of the electronics inside, but the laborious disassembly calls into question how feasible—and sustainable—a battery change would be, even when done at a B&O service center. After opening the box and finding a “plastic weld mark blocking access to the battery,” iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari notes in video that “at a minimum, any battery replacement service will have to discard the plastic case completely.”

“I would love to see B&O’s process for replacing these batteries,” Mohtari wrote in the blog post. “I’m willing to bet it’s neither cheap nor waste-free, but I’d love to be proven wrong.” Disassembly also revealed that the Beoplay Eleven is an internal “copy” of the Beoplay EX from 2022. “Even the peel-off film on the back of each earbud says “Beoplay EX” and not “Beoplay Eleven,” Mokhtari wrote. ike