Back in 2020, when I was starting with my apprenticeship, I started listening to music more often and wanted to get better headphones instead of those cheap 20CHF ones. So I decided to buy a Sony WH-1000XM3 with active noise cancelling.
And wow, they were great. Listening to music for hours without cable with good bass and good noise isolation. Even when sitting in trains or the bus, you barely hear much of the world around you. Microphone quality is decent too and you can configure them quite a bit in the app.
But after 5 years of usage and sometimes exposure to harsh conditions, such as light snow or a crammed backpack, they have degraded to a point where using them becomes hard. The headband has disintegrated significantly, has become porous and is flaking off. Additionally, the "outside headband" which houses the sliding mechanism has broken - resulting in the slider mechanism sometimes coming loose and the headphones falling part:
So repairing this should be easy ..... right?
Sadly Sony engineered their headphones to specifically be hard to repair.
- No replacement parts are sold for the WH-1000XM3 anymore. This means you'll need to go for unofficial (sometimes toxic; 1, 2) third party parts.
Some parts are in skin contact too, making chemical contamination even more likely. They are of worse quality and some countries may not have access to reliable sources. - The headband has been engineered specifically to be very thin - making it very susceptible to break after material fatigue. It is roughly 2mm thick - so 2mm is all that keeps your headphones from falling apart - great.
- The cable running from both sides is thin and has many incredibly small copper cables inside. Since the cable physically runs through the headband without any option to unplug it, you need to cut the cable and resolder it again after replacing the broken part.
- Replacing wear-and-tear parts on the headphones requires taking them fully apart, breaking glue seals and forcefully breaking open some of the parts.
- Sony doesn't provide any repair manuals, only iFixit offers unofficial guides which do not talk about the headband.
Nevertheless, I decided to repair them and ordered a replacement band from AliExpress - the only store with a decent price shipping to Switzerland which is selling that specific part I need. Not only was the part 11CHF, but it also is a significant worse plastic quality than the original. After spending about half a day on the weekend taking apart the headphones step by step and guessing what to do next (no manual), I finally figured out; repairing is too complicated and another part will likely fail soon. So I decided to use some electrotape and tape the broken part together to hopefully keep using it.
No headphones, what now?
So after a fruitless attempt of repairing them, I still need headphones. My work headphones do work, but have very little bass and no good sound quality - plus they're not mine. So which headphones to buy now?
Searching on Galaxus returns the same bad design over and over again - over the hear headphones with next to no repair options. I will have the same exact issue again in 3-5 years - which results in yet another pair of headphones in the electronic waste. Now while there is some decent recycling in Switzerland, much of it is still harming the planet and lands in the incineration plant or the landfill. But then, I remembered something.
A few months ago, I actually bought a new phone because my old one had no working camera and the battery was dying fast - A Fairphone!
Manuel
And I remembered, that Fairphone also sells some headphones, that are more repairable and sustainable. I also like the design, the green color with the pigments of recycled plastic go really well and look different from other brands. Plus the brown cable, the joystick controller and the CO2 neutrality sounds awesome. And when they were discounted by quite a bit (lowest price ever in Switzerland) a few days before black Friday, I decided to pull the trigger and get them.
Unboxing
The headphones arrive in a very simple cardboard box.
A green cover with a normal cardboard box on the inside, simple packaging.
Besides the headphones, there are also other accessories inside the box.
- A quick start manual with descriptions for the buttons
- The headphones themselves
- A cheap plastic bag to store the headphones in
Here is the first disappointment; the accessory bag is one of the cheapest and low quality feeling bags I've ever experienced. It feels very flimsy and doesn't have any branding besides the small blue tag on the side. But fine, who uses these anyway? So how about the headphones?
The initial feel is good - but definitely a bit clunky. The plastic feels very solid and of good quality - It probably won't degrade soon. The cushions for both ear pads and the head pad are very firm - more than on the Sony or the Jabra headphones. They feel very durable and are more thick than on my other headphones.
The brown cable between the two ear cups is actually a off-the-shelf USB-C cable - seriously! But it also is quite thick and feels durable. When folding the headphones, it kind of gets in the way. The change of priorities compared to the Sony is immediately apparent - the part that broke on the Sony is monstrous on the Fairbuds XL made from Aluminum and at least 5 times the thickness of the Sony plastic alternative. The slider mechanism feels less premium but is definitely more rugged - you have to apply quite some force to move the slider and therefore the force to break it will also be higher.
Charging is done via USB-C. They came pre-charged at about 50% but I decided to charge them fully before turning them on.
Turning them on
Some reviews had complained about sounds or the ANC - so lets try them out. Turning them on is done via the joystick and holding it down for a few seconds. Connecting to my Fairphone Gen. 6 was super easy, it was faster than on my Sony WH1000XM3. And after listening to Crab Rave, I can confirm that the sound is slightly worse than the Sony, but still quite good.
I also downloaded the official app and updated the firmware for this review, so I can give a useful review of them.
The voice announcements
This might be nitpicking, but I dislike the voice prompts when turning the headphones on, connecting devices or literally anything you do with them. The voice on the Sony headphones is more neutral and can also be changed to different languages - the Fairbuds XL do not offer multiple languages and the voice cannot be disabled. That is really annoying and until the date of this review, it cannot be changed in the app either. On the flip-side, the boot and shutdown sounds are refreshingly different and cool.
ANC - active noise cancellation
ANC isn't really something I use very often - my ears seem to be sensitive about it and I dislike the side effects it often comes with. The Sony can deal quite well with all kind of noises, including cars, trains and wind. However, the Fairphone are definitely worse in this regard, as they fail to remove wind noise from the microphone and therefore the headphone artificially tries to cancel non-existing noise resulting in an unpleasant noise when in ANC mode. It does cancel other noise, such as cars and people talking quite well, if there is no wind. If there is a little breeze, it starts to fail or be counter-productive.
If ANC is disabled, it feels more pleasant to me subjectively. On average there might be less noise isolation, but there aren't any unpleasant ANC artifacts. The isolation from the over ear cups is enough for most cases, although the sound leakage to the outside seems to be higher for the Fairbuds XL than for the Sony.
Wearing and comfort
This is a double edged sword. On one side, the Sony have a very high contact pressure, meaning they isolate more sound by nature. However, this also is more exhausting for the head and ears and I feel uncomfortable after some time in them. The Fairbuds XL have less pressure, but also do have less isolation. This isn't an issue for me, but might be for you if you run or do sports with your headphones on.
Wearing the Fairbuds XL is quite comfortable, but definitely less customizable, since they cannot swivel (turn to accommodate uneven heads). In cold weather, they also kept my ears warm and I wasn't bothered by the USB-C cable or the thick headband. Finding the Joystick or the ANC button to control them can be a bit tricky since the headphones have two "levels" of the cup and my hand tends to go to the wrong one.
Equalizer and playing music
Using the app, the headphones can be set to use different profiles or a custom equalizer can be configured. I had no trouble setting up the app and I disliked the default EQ a bit - so I changed to a custom EQ where I set all frequencies to an equal level which improved sound quality.
There isn't any significant audio delay, but when pausing or skipping to the next track, there is a significant reaction delay until the music pauses or skips. The headphones seem to use Android's default audio control - therefore almost any app worked just fine, including Spotify, Symfonium, Floatplane, Youtube and SRF.
One subtle thing I dislike; the volume steps are odd. I always end up listening on either level:
- One level too quiet, the music is a bit quiet for my preference.
- One level too loud, it is the next level above the previous one but is weirdly louder than the previous levels
It seems that the volume steps are not always equal or they are wrongly calibrated. This is really not a huge deal and I mostly end up listening on the lower volume since this is healthier for the ears anyway.
Battery and charging
Battery runtime seems to be very good - just like I expected. Charging is fast too and they never ran out of battery so far - I can use them for multiple days without charging them up.
Best of all; if the battery eventually degrades, it can be easily replaced by opening a latch on the side, removing the old one and inserting a new one:
And best of all, the batter is actually available and an original part. Since Fairphone just released the Fairbuds XL in US, we can expect them they'll sell spare parts for quite a while. Sadly the battery is not yet available to buy on Galaxus in Switzerland, but I believe Galaxus is to blame here - the market in Switzerland is probably to small to add it to the catalogue.
The thing about the price
So are these headphones just worse than the Sony? Probably yes, but they're also much cheaper than the Sony. Additionally, Fairphone is committing for a different goal than Sony: fair and sustainable technology.
I believe they did quite well with these, but it definitely seems less polished than their newer products, such as the Fairphone Gen 6.
Would I buy the Fairbuds XL at full price of €229 or 160CHF? Probably not. But 99CHF is more than fair (get it? 😄).
The Fairbuds XL is definetly not for everyone - their design is a statement and you pay for a product, that you can keep longer than others - not for the best sound quality on the market. But considering the price, I think it is very impressive for a small company to develop a product like this - while making it sustainable and E-Waste neutral.
Conclusion
The Fairbuds XL have been a good experience so far. They are less polished than other products but do offer decent sound quality at a good price. The joystick and modularity are innovative and not an empty promise. Most issues I have with them could be fixed via firmware update and I expect that Fairphone will deliver some updates in the future. I can't recommend the Fairbuds XL to everyone, but definitely to most. And if you value sustainability and fairness (e.g. no slavery, fairly sourced resources), then the Fairbuds XL might be for you.
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