Fairphone is one company that has followed through with building repairable and sustainable smartphones with extended support, and now, it’s looking like it’ll be entering a new product category with a set of over-ear Fairbuds XL noise-canceling headphones, which you can see in detail thanks to leaked images and details published by WinFuture (via Android Police).
The leaked Fairbuds images include black and green color options, and you can clearly see speckles in the finish of each cup’s structure that point to the company’s usage of recycled plastics. One side of the set has a button and a nub that looks like either a dial (a la Apple’s AirPods Max) or a mini joystick, and the headset can be folded inward toward its cushiony headband.
You can see more of WinFuture’s images in the gallery below.
PreviousNext
1/6
Fairphone’s headphones visibly include USB-C and what seems to be a LED status light and microphone hole but, unfortunately, no 3.5mm jack. The exclusion shouldn’t be surprising, as the company removed the headphone jack in its latest repairable and more modernized Fairphone 4. And, well, it’s 2023, meaning many things don’t have headphone jacks anymore.
WinFuture apparently acquired the leak through an unknown retailer, and while the Fairbuds XL don’t have a solid price yet, WinFuture previously reported that they would cost €249 (or about $275). We also have yet to see these headphones in a sort of exploded view to show off how repairable they really are. Apple’s AirPods Max is surprisingly one of the more repairable options on the market right now, but there’s room for something even easier to take apart.
We’ll have to wait and see if the Fairbuds XL are the real deal for sustainable headphones. Fairphone already sells totally wireless earbuds, and although those aren’t advertised as repairable, they apparently are built with recycled plastic.