We lab tested the world's most maintainable earbuds: Fairphone Fairbuds 2 review

Though replaceable batteries are extremely rare for earbuds, they’re starting to pick up steam. So now that there’s some competition in this arena, how is the latest offering from Fairphone, the Fairphone Fairbuds 2? We were given an opportunity to find out.

What’s it like to use the Fairphone Fairbuds 2?

The earbuds are extremely basic — for better, and worse.

Design

The Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is a set of blocky lollipop-and-stem earbuds, with a soft, PFAS-free silicone ear tip, and matte finish. The earbuds themselves are a little hefty at 5.8g, and built around having a removable/replaceable battery — so the housing design is a little strange if you look closely. However, most people won’t notice there’s anything up with the earbuds at first glance.

The nozzles are quite short, which is great if you don’t want a brain tickle any time you shove your earbuds in. However, if you have larger ear canals, you might find that you feel like the earbuds are falling out — even if they aren’t. I was able to comfortably listen to the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 for a few hours at a time, but you’ll likely want to dig into the box for the other sizes of ear tips if the default doesn’t sit right.

For anyone thinking that a removable battery means no ingress protection: fear not. The Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is rated IP54, which is enough to block most dust and incidental moisture — just don’t shower with these and you’ll be fine. Just be sure that the battery drawer is covered by the silicone sleeve, however.

Controlling the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is very straightforward if a bit simplistic. A single tap will play or pause your music, a double tap will send the track forward, and a triple tap will track backward. Like I said, nothing amazing. Currently, there isn’t a way to customize these controls in the app.

Features

As far as features go, the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is fairly light. However, that’s not generally what the eco-conscious among us are concerned with, first and foremost. Much of the attention paid to the product was geared toward making it easy to fix and keep running for a long time.

But once you open the app, you’ll be greeted by a barebones set of controls. Mainly, you can change EQ presets, Find My earbuds, ANC settings and… that’s really about it. While there are plenty of menus to look through, none actually offer much in the way of features like control customization or device selection. The earbuds can connect to multiple sources at once, but it almost seems as though that’s an oversight with the lack of app control there.

The EQ is especially light with a 5-band slider, and an inability to change the center frequency of each band. Though it’s a good thought to include, its utility is a little lacking.

How do the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 connect?

The Fairphone Fairbuds 2 connects to sources via Bluetooth 6.0, over SBC, AAC, LC3, and LDAC. It supports Multipoint, but can only connect to two different devices at once. Pairing is also simple, as you only need to place the earbuds back into the case, hold down the big button in the middle until the three lights come on, and check your phone’s list of available Bluetooth devices.

In my use of the Fairphone Fairbuds 2, I didn’t find there to be any issues with stuttering, or dropouts, but once, the left earbud would pair to my phone and not the right earbud. The issue did not resolve itself through a simple re-pair: only a factory data reset fixed it. This is performed by placing each earbud back into the case and holding the button down until the lights started flashing faster than the pairing mode flash (I know, odd). This only happened when I was pairing an absurd amount of devices, so it’s possible that this is merely a bug that will get fixed by production firmware, but if you run into it: now you know how to fix it!

How long does the Fairphone Fairbuds 2’s battery last?

With the ANC on and connectivity issues addressed, the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 was able to last 5 hours and 29 minutes in our standardized battery test. While a bit short of Fairphone’s claim of 6 hours, you may be able to squeeze that out of the earbuds if you listen at a lower level than we tested at.

But what’s most interesting about the batteries of the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is the fact that not only are they replaceable, but they’re easy to replace (with an LIR 1054 button cell, that is). Though a few products have hit market with this claim, very few let you swap dead cells out without a special tool, accidental breakage, or lots of swearing. For many, you have to pry open an earbud, or remove several screws at once to reach the battery — something most people just aren’t going to do. For the Fairphone Fairbuds 2, all you have to do is peel back the silicone rubber coat, and open the battery drawer.

Just be aware that the first time you do this: there’s a right and a wrong way to push the drawer back in. When I removed the battery the first time, I thought I’d broken the Fairbuds 2, but in reality, the little alignment nub near the hinge of were just jammed into the wrong spot. As long as you make sure that the notch near the hinge matches up with the casing, you should be fine.

If you need to access the charging case’s cell, you just need a T4 torx bit to remove or replace the screw on the bottom. Though it’s a bit annoying that Fairphone didn’t use a Philips head (or the far superior Robertson), it’s not unheard of for small electronics screws to use this standard. Though iFixit used a handful of tools to access the batteries in the earbuds and case, I was able to do so with only the Torx bit and some finagling with my fingers.

How well do the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 cancel noise?

The Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is able to isolate you from outside noise by around 54%, and actively cancel around 81% of junk noise by average perceived loudness. However, not all sounds are cancelled the same — the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 seems to have sacrificed a little bit of high-end attenuation for comfort. That’s not the worst thing in the world, but it may mean that you notice some high-pitched sounds getting through every now and again.

For example, I was able to hear tire noise while walking down the street — a good thing. But the bear bumbling through a fence beside me was deleted from the things I could hear, and that was… less good. I’m not going to anthropomorphize the ursine nuisance and make any claims about how the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 meant anything to him, but don’t expect animals to understand the eco-friendliness of the Fairphone Fairbuds 2.

How good is the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 Transparency mode?

The transparency mode of the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is fairly standard; nothing to write home about. Sounds piped through the earbuds definitely won’t fool you into thinking that you’re waltzing about without earbuds in or anything, but you should be able to hear your surroundings well enough to avoid danger.

How do the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 sound?

Sound quality was always the downfall of the original Fairbuds, but the Fairbuds 2 improved on that… to a point.

Reviewer’s notes

Include a photo of you using the product.

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.

Can you use the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 for phone calls?

As the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 has a mic array, you can unsurprisingly use it for calls of all stripes. If you’d like to hear how you’ll sound on the other end of the phone, just know that below is a best-case scenario, and that call quality can be affected by your network and/or client.

Fairphone Fairbuds 2 microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Should you buy the Fairphone Fairbuds 2?

The Fairphone Fairbuds 2 is certainly leaps and bounds better than the original Fairbuds both in terms of sound quality and fitting the daily use of most normal people. Truly, this is an acceptable alternative to most of the earbuds on the market today for anyone hoping to make less environmentally-unsafe decisions. There’s only so much you can do with products needing batteries, but at least the Fairphone Fairbuds 2 makes it easy to reduce e-waste by making these cells much easier to replace and recycle… you are recycling your batteries, right?

But giving you a clear recommendation here is going to be tough because there simply aren’t competing earbuds that offer the same level of maintenance and repairability as the Fairphone Fairbuds 2. You’re going to have to make significant tradeoffs in cost and ease of maintenance if you want something akin to the Fairphone Fairbuds 2’s build options. For example, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM True Wireless 5 ($299.95 at Amazon) has much better sound quality, while offering replaceable batteries, but they’re far harder to replace and proprietary to Sennheiser. As for other options… we’re still waiting on good ones to come out.