Fairphone Fairbuds review

There has been a conspicuous lack of maintainable earbuds on the market, but that is no longer true. The Fairphone Fairbuds offer a set of wireless earbuds that will last you as long as you maintain them, and that’s one heck of a value proposition — but are they any good? We tested to find out.

Editor’s note: this is the first version of the article. Updates will follow as the market changes.

What’s it like to use Fairphone Fairbuds?

Using the Fairphone Fairbuds is as banal and straightforward as the standard earbuds of the last five years have been. There aren’t many bells and whistles; the earbuds act as a companion to your computer or phone to handle calls, music, or anything audio.

The earbuds are fairly chunky, but the tradeoff for that extra bulk is that the Fairphone Fairbuds are the most repairable earphones ever made — the have the most ability to be maintained, and not just by trained professionals. You can do the work on the cheap if you’re comfortable with a small Philips head screwdriver and pushing in connectors. From the battery to the PCBs to the connectors in the case, you can pretty easily make repairs to the Fairbuds yourself, which is something that’s absolutely unheard of. You can also use pretty standard parts for the repairs instead of relying on bespoke, tailored components. These earbuds will be able to continue working long past true wireless earbuds’ average end-of-life due to the ability to maintain the product. That’s outstanding. From here on out, I get to lord this over every other soon-to-be-ewaste earbuds that hit the market without removable batteries as proof that it can be done, and that giving manufacturers grief for not making a more maintainable product is perfectly valid.

Comfort isn’t a big issue for the Fairphone Fairbuds, as the ovoid nozzles and included ear tips do a good job of meeting human anatomy — better than the typical perfect cylinder nozzles, anyway. A somewhat low weight and the fact that the outside of the bud can rest on your antitragus means there are two points of contact for the earbuds to secure their fit. You shouldn’t have any issues with comfort here. However, because there are only three sizes of ear tips, it’s possible — however unlikely — that getting a good fit may be difficult. If you find that to be the case, you might want to look into third-party ear tips.

The charging case is a bit girthy, but it’s flat enough to fit into your pockets. Part of the extra bulk is due to the protective casing that holds in the battery, which is removable if you have a screwdriver small enough to get at the tiny Phillips head in the dead center of the bottom of the case. Should the charging case’s battery die, or merely reduce in capacity, you’ll always have the option of replacing the cell — instead of hucking the whole product in the trash.

But just because they’re the “best” does not mean they are “perfect.” And unfortunately, there’s a lot to unpack when it comes to the performance of the earbuds.

Should you use the Fairbuds app for the Fairphone Fairbuds?

I usually grit my teeth at having to install yet another damned app, and the Fairbuds app is essential if you want to get timely updates, or change the EQ presets. But that’s really all you’re getting out of this app, outside of some FAQ about how to use the products, and a link to the Fairphone store. There’s no ANC controls, control customizations, or any other settings to speak of. Additionally, you can’t really trust the battery information you see in the app, as I noticed that the battery levels were all over the place while listening to the Fairbuds.

I’m not wild about apps that don’t have a lot of function, and this one would be unnecessary if the earbuds were more reliable.

How do the Fairphone Fairbuds connect?

The Fairphone Fairbuds connect to your phone or computer via a Bluetooth 5.3 over SBC or AAC. However, the connection quality between the Fairphone Fairbuds and a handful of other source devices weren’t that good. For example, my phone had to be quite close by if I wanted the buds to avoid dropouts. Additionally, there is no Multipoint — a bizarre omission for something that uses Bluetooth 5.3 — so you’ll have to manually pair the earbuds to a new source should you want to switch devices.

I will note that there’s a few gremlins in the Fairphone Fairbuds that need a little work, as I sometimes found one channel would simply stop working until I re-paired the earbuds completely. Additionally, the app would report the dead channel as having random battery life percentages, only to go back up to 100% upon re-pairing.

How long does the Fairphone Fairbuds’ battery last?

Forcing the Fairphone Fairbuds through our standardized battery test gave us a result of 6 hours and 34 minutes, slightly on the north side of average for a set of true wireless earphones. Right about now is usually where we trash wireless earbuds as a whole for having irreplaceable batteries and/or having to worry about the relatively short life of your product. But unlike other earbuds, you can actually replace the batteries of the Fairphone Fairbuds when they eventually give up the ghost.

By removing the rubber rings around the earbuds, you can access the battery door and slide out the battery housing. Once this is done, you can simply pop out the LIR1054 cells and swap in new ones you pick up from anywhere that sells rechargeable hearing aid batteries. Just be sure to dispose of the dead ones properly. Because of this ability, there’s no reason to toss the Fairphone Fairbuds when the batteries no longer work; the earbuds will last as long as you maintain them.

How well do the Fairphone Fairbuds cancel noise?

With their active noise canceling (ANC) unit enabled, the Fairphone Fairbuds do a fair job of attenuating outside noise. Breaking up roughly 80% of junk noise from reaching your earbuds, the Fairphone Fairbuds are very capable of preventing annoying sounds from reaching your ears. Should you disable the ANC, the Fairphone Fairbuds can isolate you from about 66% of outside noise, largely due to a really good fit. Though technically not as good as the top tier of earbuds on the market, this is close enough that we’re okay with saying is good enough for a flight or commuters.

How do the Fairphone Fairbuds sound?

Though the Fairphone Fairbuds excel in their design, the sound isn’t very good. I’m not sure what’s up with these earbuds, but we put the time in; they just can’t be fixed with an EQ preset.

Multi-Dimensional Audio Quality Scores (MDAQS)

The chart below shows how the sound of the Fairphone Fairbuds was assessed by the Multi-Dimensional Audio Quality Score (MDAQS) algorithm from HEAD acoustics.

For reasons that will become incredibly obvious as I continue, the very mediocre timbre score drags down otherwise respectable measures in distortion and immersiveness to a very underwhelming 3.6 overall. While this won’t mean that you’ll actively hate the Fairphone Fairbuds, it does mean that most people won’t be huge fans — it’s something they tolerate more than rant or rave about. This is probably perfect for someone looking for earbuds that fit a role, and won’t want for better sound quality down the road.

However, I caution anyone looking at the above chart against interpreting the Fairphone Fairbuds as “average.” Mean opinion scores don’t reflect how products sit within the rest of the market, but how well people would rate a particular product. In terms of scores we’ve come across, the Fairphone Fairbuds are decidedly below average — especially in Timbre.

Reviewer’s notes

Editor’s note: this review uses a hover-enabled glossary to describe sound quality based on a consensus vocabulary. You can read about it here.

Objective Measurements

I’m not sure what happened here, but there’s something very wrong with this frequency response. For starters, the highs fall off way too early, and while this won’t impact phone calls all that much, it will make your music sound weird. Very weird. This leads to music content with high-frequency sounds that just don’t hold up. As this is a pretty unusual tuning, its flaws will be obvious to anyone moving over from other earbuds.

For starters, the lows and mids are fairly evenly emphasized, though this may not satisfy those looking for stronger bass. But most people will be turning up the volume of these earbuds quite far to make up for the highs being so underemphasized. In that event, mids are going to be extremely loud compared to what we’d like to hear, and that’s an issue.

Can you use the Fairphone Fairbuds for phone calls?

The Fairphone Fairbuds are able to be used for phone and computer chats via their microphone array. Below are samples collected in the lab.

Fairphone Fairbuds microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Should you buy the Fairphone Fairbuds?

If you want earbuds that will last you damned near a lifetime, the Fairphone Fairbuds are the best bet on the market and it’s not close. However, the lack of sound quality will turn many off. Though these earbuds have my favorite design ethos by far, the function is subpar — even if that mainly reflects how far audio has come in the last ten years. It leaves the Fairbuds in a tough spot because they won’t compete with similarly-priced options, and they need more mass appeal to succeed. Additionally, you can’t get them in the US or Canada just yet, though that may be coming soon.

The upside here is that with the Fairphone Fairbuds’ entry on the market, there’s not only proof that more repairable earbuds are possible, but there’s a factory out there already manufacturing these things. The idea that a company can’t make earbuds that last is now definitively proven to be BS, and Fairphone has learned a great deal about designing for products that actually, y’know, last. That’s a bigger win than it sounds like, and it’s entirely possible that Fairphone could equip the successors to these earbuds with next-gen drivers that sound better than the originals by a country mile (and also take up far less space). Heck, due to the nature of how repairable these earbuds are, I wouldn’t be surprised if some DIY enthusiast took it upon themselves to attempt correcting this on their own. If the next earbuds made by Fairphone solve the sound quality problem, I would have no issues whatsoever recommending them.

What should you get instead of the Fairphone Fairbuds?

After spending over ten years telling people that they should be demanding better, and finally getting a kindred spirit in a manufacturer, I don’t want to recommend other products. But these earphones aren’t going to cut it for everybody. On the one hand, there simply aren’t alternatives for people looking for buds as repairable and sustainable as the Fairphone Fairbuds. On the other, the Fairphone Fairbuds are very much the opposite of “cutting edge” when it comes to features. To give you alternatives to these earbuds, you absolutely must sacrifice any delusion of being “eco-friendly” or “repairable.” There’s such a huge hole in the market for this segment, and I’ll happily cheer more companies following Fairphone’s pursuit of products that are built to last a lifetime.

For those of you looking to save money and get better performance, the easy pick here is the Moondrop Space Travel ($24.99 at Amazon). These earbuds are dirt cheap, run circles around the Fairphone Fairbuds in terms of performance, and the main drawback is their somewhat disposable nature.

While many people might compare the Apple AirPods Pro 2 ($239 at Amazon) to the Fairphone Fairbuds because of Apple’s sustainability efforts, what Apple does and what Fairphone does are night and day: spending $10 or $20 every few years to repair the Fairphone Fairbuds is far less wasteful than Apple’s battery replacement program. Though companies like Thinksound in the past have accomplished a lot by shortening up supply chains and repurposing overstock from other companies, we haven’t seen the bigger tech behemoths follow suit in a meaningful way. AirPods are not eco-friendly in a way that is comparable to the Fairphone Fairbuds.

Frequently asked questions