Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Other companies need to take note! – Fairphone Fairbuds XL”.
Hey short circuit Adam here, what is an earbud every time we title a video with the word headphone there’s somebody in the comments who goes they’re, not headphones, they’re, earbuds! Well, look here! These are the fair buds. Do they look like an earbud to you? Do they look like a headphone to you? Well, news alert names mean nothing, that’s why you get a 40 90 and a laptop that only runs at 30 Watts because names these just may come up fair phone, you’ve, probably heard of them, because they’re cool, repairable, sustainable phones, one that we sadly can’t get over Here in North America, I’m hoping that they really start introducing products over here soon but they’re, bringing that sense of sustainability and repairability to the new, Fair buds XL. Why are these called Fair buds? Well, they’ve already released a pair of fair Buds and I guess they wanted to keep The Branding in it, because if you can have air ponds and then airpods Max, why can’t you have Fair Buds and fairbuds XL? Oh they left. Oh, this is an address to me, so I probably shouldn’t read it. It suggests to Matt and then Linus, hey, Matt, hey Linus, we’re tired of your wasteful excess first off, I’m already excited to see the design. I’Ve always been kind of a fan of this speckled recycled plastic. Look, I think it’s it’s funky. So what did they promise? They promise Superior Sound sustainably designed we have 40 millimeter Dynamic drivers, I’m not sure what material those Dynamic drivers are made of active noise. Canceling.
30 hours of battery life, seamless, dual point: connectivity, great aptx, HD awesome as well for high resolution audio over Bluetooth wireless – I don’t know if we have aptx low latency or adaptive, so these might not be the best headphones for gaming, they’re climate, conscious, asterisk, fair and Recycled materials, modular design for easy repair and fair working conditions. Now, let’s see what they’re doing with these headphones um a nice minimally printed, easily recyclable box all the packages paper and look at that there. They are no pointless plastic, no extra fabric. I it doesn’t feel like it’s moving at all, which is like really slick because of how minimal this packaging is.
It’S been great to see a lot of companies moving ahead on making smart recyclable packaging like this looks like it’s almost entirely made out of just a couple of pieces of cardboard, so one two three uh, we got a bag and then this box. What does gazundite mean like gesundheit because they say it right here and I haven’t sneezed, you get a quick start guide with documentation for like every place in the world that they’re selling us you get a bag. You get the headphones, we got a screwdriver, that’s probably just because they know that we’re going to want to take these apart, to see how repairable they are. Don’T expect to get this with your set of headphones um.
The bag itself is a plastic material, but there’s also some sort of like Fabric in the middle. So just for carrying your headphones around, I assume that the bag is made of recycled materials and it’s probably mostly plastic. I imagine it’s polyester um, nice, that’s pretty cool. Let’S uh: let’s take a look at the headphones themselves, materials for this.
We have vegan leather, also known as plastic. We have recycled aluminum and Tin for the construction and the plastic on this is 80 or more recycled. Awesome uh the more recycled materials, the better looking at the headphones. The green is an interesting color.
It might not be everyone’s kind of green. I wish that the speckled plastic Motif was carried over through more of the phone. It feels a little bit lost in the overall green.
I do really like the orange or maybe copper accents like look at. You have your navigation dial here in Copper and as well as these wires on the right ear cup. We have a multi-purpose Button as well as a nav joystick, so I imagine, left and right can be forward and backwards skip track up and down will be your volume. This might be a power button, as well as your personal assistant and on the bottom. We have the a USB type-c charging port, what looks to be a microphone and maybe an LED this USB port is for charging, but also it provides digital and analog music, so you can listen to a device via USBC.
Thank you so much. I really really appreciate that. That means that, if I have these at my desk, I can use them, can they charge and be listened to. At the same time we will have to find out and on the left, ear cup we have nothing, maybe a port for the speaker.
Do I even see a microphone hole? Interesting? Maybe it’s all in concentrated in this port, we’ll have to find out, because this whole thing comes apart. Like this, I wish I would never do that. I was like. Oh, let’s pull these down uh, oh a little bit of a gap, probably because this thing is removable, so we have a smooth adjustment rather than say a ratchet mechanism for the headphones, not a ton of movement on the cups themselves, not much uh swivel, not a Ton of tilt the ear cups also aren’t particularly deep, and we have some sort of what feels like a memory foam for the ear cup.
That’S in there. I do think the texture of the vegan leather is pretty nice. It’S a very luxurious kind of plastic. Leather, luxurious, plastic, leather, but these aren’t the biggest ear cups wow. They Echo a lot it’s roomy in these for my head, they’re producing quite a good seal. I feel like I’m very enclosed right now, they’re, not on so there’s.
No active noise canceling happening right now. People who have bigger ears, they might have a little bit of discomfort with these smaller ear cups, as well as they not particularly deep ear cups. I mean you could probably replace these. These are a pretty typical size. So, if you wanted, you could buy thicker ear. Cushions I don’t know if earphone will be stocking, customization or just replacement parts. They have an ip54 rating, so uh five in the dust resistance, four in the water resistance, that’s going to be like a splashes. You could wear these if you wanted to work out, but uh, maybe not wear them in a tarantul downpour, shall we turn them on and take a listen after our sponsor thanks to Newegg for sponsoring this video looking for the latest technology to upgrade your gaming rig Home office or entertainment setup look no further than Newegg as one of the largest online retailers of computer hardware, software and electronics.
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Your Tech meets check out Newegg lmg.gg Newegg we’re just going to get set up with the fair buds app before we get anywhere because maybe there’s firmware stuff. The app itself looks pretty slick. There’S nothing connected.
Let’S get started so we use the joystick to turn it on. If we need, if we’re having trouble pairing automatically, then we can pair manually by using the ANC button left and right in the joystick previous next song. Well, I called it I’m a genius. This multifunction button is for your ANC, turns on turns noise canceling on off or ambient mode.
Thank you for including an off, so many Brands only include ANC or transparency mode, and I really really dislike that. Sometimes I don’t want the noise canceling and I also don’t want to hear the world pumped into the headphones. I just want it off double press the joystick to see how much battery I have left press the joystick once to accept an incoming call. Are we connected yet okay, pairing mode um, if you’re like rubbing up against anything, these are going to be quite noisy.
That’S probably a downside of like how much plastic is involved in the build um. It’S so echoey, like any touch on the side of the ear cups, are really really loud and distracting hey. Do you guys want to talk to me hi hi, Adam, I’m still talking, I’m not going to stop talking. You can’t even stop me.
I love talking. That’S actually, okay, the transparency mode sounds quite natural. I’M really impressed actually because that sounded like you were just talking to me when I took my headphones off, it sounds like the same. That’S great that can be hard. A lot of headphones will make it sound. Very, very synthetic or just just not good, but obviously we’re in kind of a studio scenario.
So there’s not a ton of noise that they’re trying to like block out when it comes to the microphones swipe whoa yo. Did you see that, oh, if you’re, having a problem with your headphones and you don’t like what the word is or you don’t know what part exactly you’re looking for? You can go into this app and they have a breakdown of all of the components of the headphone. This is really cool and a link to their website to replace it. They have a some EQ presets.
We got Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, dial it up to 11 and all around powerful sound with real presence um. Is there really no actual EQ in here? That’S a bummer powered by sonar works. Interestingly enough, their eqs are all with sonar Works. Sonar works. You may have heard of them they produce like sound ID reference, sound ID references, Digital Signal, processing software.
You can use it to fine-tune the sound of your headphones or your speakers, and you can go so far as to take like actual measurements with a reference microphone. They know a lot about sound at sonarworks, which is a pretty cool team up. I think, however, take it with a grain of salt.
It’S the same thing being like Oh yeah, Sound by Harmon or like uh Meridian sound on LG headphones. It’S just kind of marketing. Fluff, it doesn’t really indicate quality, I’m interested in how these EQ presets work.
I really really wish that there was a 10 band EQ or something in the app and I’m really disappointed. I hope that they add that in soon uh, but let’s take a listen. Let’S take a listen, did you love it? Did you hate it? Would you rate it you’re the best you’re the best? What should I listen to you? Next we’re currently listening to the Amsterdam setting um to me, it’s a bit Bassy a little bit bloated.
You can tell that there’s a v curve applied, but it’s making uh vocals and stuff like the mid sound, a little distant, almost pushed back in the mix in a way that I find kind of unsatisfying and almost empty sounding um, a little disappointing and on the Top end, things are a little bit harsh, like they’ve, really cranked up some of the brightness and you know, sounds like it’s a little brittle we’re gon na try Copenhagen. It’S all about sophistication, bright and pleasantly neutral, which is it is it brighter? Is it neutral? Soundstage is, is decent, things are sitting in the right spot in the mix, but it doesn’t sound incredibly spacious. It is a closed back headphone. So soundstage is a little bit more difficult to deal with.
The Boston sounds bad. I would not use the Boston preset on the signature, the Boston, the band they sound great yo Skrill drop it hard. Let’S listen to the new Skrillex album. The difference between noise, canceling on and off doesn’t seem to have too big of an impact on the sound. Maybe there’s a little bit of extra brightness when you have noise canceling on yeah, there’s just a kind of a harshness in the highs that makes it sound a little bit cheaper than I’d expect I’m not super impressed by them currently.
But that’s just my opinion. We got a robot that has facts and the robot says they found okay in the upper mids. We can see at 3K there’s that dip.
This kind of causes, a lot of vocals to sound a little bit recessed and lost in the mix and the Peak at seven kilohertz is uh, makes things sound a little brittle. There is a slight bump in the lower base, which makes things sound a little boomy, but overall not the best, not the worst for noise cancellation. The red line is passive, which does a pretty good job of blocking out noise in general and for active noise canceling.
It’S a little disappointing while it does a good job of blocking up stuff down in the 100 Hertz region. When we get to the stuff, like the 400 Hertz region, which is where people are talking at uh, we don’t really see much reduction in noise, which is a bit of a bummer. Let’S tear them apart. Let’S see how just how repairable they are. I don’t know how to repair them.
They gave me a screwdriver, that’s a Phillips double zero and uh. I don’t know if I guess, oh hey, look at that they even have replaceable batteries. Thank you so much. This is such an important feature.
So many headphones, especially nowadays go to waste because you can’t just buy a new battery. You have to throw the whole thing out because you can’t replace it or Replacements are prohibitively expensive because they’re difficult. It looks like to get this headband off.
We’Ll have to take out we’ll have to take off an ear cup. So, let’s, let’s start there, it’s really really great that they all not only do they use all of the same screw type or screw head type, but they’re using a normie, screwdriver they’re, just using Phillips. I will not be putting this back together just soon.
This is probably unavoidable. Making repairable stuff can be very difficult, but they do have multiple types of screws. I’Ve found at least two now, let’s see if we can take out the driver with the framework laptop there’s, only three types of screws and they all require the same screw head. I think this is a little bit more complex in terms of what it requires for me.
Yo look at that. You got access to a lot of the logic circuitry. You can see that everything is connected with ribbon cables with easy, uh Lego latches be careful with those, because you can break stuff really easy, but that is super freaking cool. Oh there we go. This is pre-release. There’S no instructions currently available a lot of their support. Materials are still embargoed, so I’m going in blind here and then hopefully not breaking anything. This also seems to have a mechanism with which we can detach oh two screws to get the headband off two screws.
A little latchy boy same thing with the uh USB cable, maybe a couple more USB cables. There’S another couple: screws right: there that hold this USB cable and smart and yeah. It’S all plastic there’s the metal must be just for the drivers and for the batteries and stuff just for the traces, that’s probably as far as we’re gon na get.
Today they don’t advertise you being able to just get a replacement for a circuit board, though it’s nice to know that if you’re like a hobbyist – and you want to try your hand at doing some repairs or modifications, you can do that yourself. It’S really really neat. Even the circuit boards just held in by screws all the replacement parts should be available for purchase on launch, but the headphones themselves are going to run you 249 Euro, which is um not particularly cheap.
That’S going to come up to like around 300 USD 270 US assuming everything goes okay for fairphone in the future. This could be the last pair of headphones. You ever really need easily replaceable battery easily replaceable headsets easy to replaceable ear cups. So this can be.
You could consider this an investment and sound quality um. While I wasn’t super enthused about it. It’S definitely not bad features set includes like ANC, appdx HD, it’s pretty solid. It’S a cool package. It’S a great cause.
I really support seeing repairable products like this. Oliver asked an interesting question, which was: would it be cheaper to buy all the replacement parts individually and build it yourself that we don’t know, as this is still pre-release, but that would also be kind of cool. That’S a fun little project, styrofoam I like what fairphone does.
I think this is a big step up from their Fair buds, which were completely unrepairable, which was weird. If fairphone can make this repairable every other company who doesn’t do it is just being greedy. I really hope that they’ll sell this on this side of the ocean pretty soon, because I think that we need to see more products like this in the market, thanks for watching. If you like this, why don’t you check out a video that has completely non-reparable headphones? Like the Alienware Dell a721th, they uh yeah, you can’t fix them.
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