KEY FINDINGS
• Along the bottom edge you’ll find a few holes, but none are the round 3.5mm kind. Instead, wired listening is handled by the Lightning port, pulling double duty for listening and charging.
• The first step in disassembly is removing the magnetic ear cushions. Underneath the ear cushions: holes! And are those screws? We’re not fighting glue yet. These are already looking like a promising departure from the rest of the AirPods we’ve previously scalpeled into submission. The less-than-good news is, they’re Pentalobe screws. Luckily we came prepared for just about any kind of screw thanks to our Marlin screwdriver set.
• Those screws got our hopes up, but they behave strangely. They turn a little way in each direction, then stop. If you forcibly remove them like we did, you’ll be rewarded with the sound of loose pieces rattling around inside the earcups—which remain sealed shut. The next round of frustration: adhesive. That’s right, releasing the locks and/or removing the screws isn’t enough. There’s no clearance at all for prying these things out by the edges—you’re going to do some damage. Since we’ve already removed the screws, we use a dental pick to hook under the screw holes and pull. Finally, we’re in! With the screws removed, the drivers flip out, revealing a pair of repair-friendly spring contacts underneath. To our relief, both cells are fastened with screws. Even better, they provide power via a single, iPhone-style pop connector—no solder here.
• Next, the logic board. There’s a unique board in each side—we extract both. Behind the two exterior slits on the lower corner of each can is a plastic air channel, which passes through to the cavity behind the driver. Presumably, this is the ventilation system that gives those drivers their distortion-free oomph at higher volumes. Hiding beneath that antenna line on the left ear cup is a big antenna. We thought this might be a counterweight, to offset the batteries in the opposite earcup—but it weighs next to nothing. The upper microphones are secured with metal brackets, screwed, and plastic-riveted into place.
• Any good headphone headband has to tilt, spin, and connect the earcups. Apple uses a wrap-around flex cable in the rotating portion of the joint, with clever routing and built-in strain relief—then switches to spring contacts for the connection to the headband. Despite the joint’s complexity, you can detach the entire headband with just a SIM card removal tool or paperclip. Fully assembled, a poke in the right place compresses two tiny springs in the joint, freeing a clamp that secures the headband.
• AirPods Max Repairability Score: 6 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair). The ear cushions attach (and detach) magnetically. The headband detaches from earcups with a poke from a paperclip or SIM card tool. Drivers and battery are secured with screws and use repair-friendly board connections. While screws are preferable to glue, the sheer number of screw types here is baffling. Pentalobe screws and adhesives guard the earcups.