Did Bang & Olufsen Finally Make Repairable Earbuds? Not Even Close

Wireless earbuds are one of our least favorite device categories. The plastic shell of most earbuds are glued shut, with batteries glued or soldered in, meaning after a few hundred cycles the buds are utterly useless and non-serviceable. It’s no wonder that the vast majority of these devices score so low on our repairability scale.

There are a few gems; the Fairbuds in particular are an outstanding example of how user serviceable batteries in earbuds are possible. Sony’s WF-1000XM3 earbuds were also decently repairable—although sadly every model in that lineup since then has been worse. But for the most part, manufacturers simply want to make more of the same size-zero devices.

So we get pretty excited every time we see the words “replaceable battery” associated with wireless earbuds. That latest claim comes from Bang & Olufsen’s $500 Beoplay Eleven. With such a high price tag and promises of battery replacements, I was hopeful that these earbuds might join the slim “repairable earbuds” ranks. I’m not sure how they did it, but B&O have managed to disappoint me in every conceivable way.

Beoplay Eleven Batteries: Technically Serviceable

Let’s start with that “replaceable battery” claim. When we got into the fine print, we realized that B&O weren’t advertising a user-replaceable battery at all. Turns out, the battery is only meant to be replaceable at B&O service centers, which is a far cry from the user replaceable experience on the Fairbuds or the Sony WF-1000XM3. But we retained hope that, even if B&O would prefer to do the repair themselves, maybe designing for service would mean that an intrepid at-home repairer could figure it out. 

Sadly, the battery removal process is very similar to the Apple AirPods. We had to slot it into an AirPods jig, in fact, to keep it steady enough for the rounds of heating and prying we needed to carry out to get inside.

Once we finally cracked the case, we could see the battery—but it still was stuck firmly to the bottom case. When we looked closer, we realized there was actually a little spot weld holding the battery in on one side. On the other side, it’s soldered to a circuit board. Safe to say even the bravest DIY repairer would hesitate here.

I’d love to see B&O’s process for changing these batteries out. I’m willing to bet it’s neither cheap nor waste-free but I would love to be proven wrong.

Beoplay EX vs Beoplay Eleven

When we got the whole thing open, we were in for an even bigger surprise: turns out the Beoplay Eleven is an exact copy of the three year-old, $400 Beoplay EX! There are some key software changes and the microphones have been upgraded to better deliver ANC performance—but that’s it. Everything else inside these buds is a carbon copy. Even the peel-away film on the rear of each earbud says “Beoplay EX”—not “Beoplay Eleven.” Hmm.

This raises the question: if they’re offering service on the identical Beoplay Eleven batteries, are they also replacing batteries on the Beoplay EX earbuds? Confusingly, the answer appears to be no. And, at the time of writing, the original “battery service” tab on the Beoplay Eleven support page has seemingly disappeared.

Price Point and Competition

This last point is for you hardware nerds. You might be surprised (or not), but the hardware inside the Beoplay Eleven doesn’t scream premium. Quite the opposite, from the control board to the wiring, a side by side comparison of the Beoplay Eleven buds and the Airpods 4 buds show how far behind the Beoplay Eleven is in terms of hardware design.

The Beoplay Eleven deploys two microphones in series on the stem, one to capture your voice for phone calls and another to “hear” sound from your surroundings for noise cancellation purposes, and has a third microphone offset against the driver in the ear (also for noise cancellation)

The AirPods take a no-compromise approach of placing one microphone at the bottom most tip of the stem, the exterior noise cancellation microphone at the outer curved edge, and the inner noise cancellation microphone directly inline with the eardrum. These placements are not easy to achieve, requiring a certain amount of obsessive overengineering and deep pockets to execute.

Depending on who you ask, this gives the AirPods a minor or major edge in ANC performance when compared to the competition.

Setting the Bar Low

I could get my head around the price point and any other niggling quality of life shortfalls if I could replace those batteries myself. As it stands, attempting to meet the bare minimum required under upcoming EU law for serviceable batteries—and failing—nets Bang & Olufsen’s Beoplay Eleven a 1/10 on our repairability scorecard. It’s 2025, and consumers aren’t looking for compliance with the letter of the law—we expect compliance with the spirit of the law, too.

[UPDATE] Bang & Olufsen sent a carefully worded response to TechRadar who ran coverage of our teardown. In their response, B&O insist that their service centers have the ability to replace the batteries inside the Beoplay Eleven. As I said in the teardown, I’d love to be proven wrong but the disassembly process suggests that there’s more waste involved in the process of replacing the battery than B&O is letting on.

The question that B&O has left unanswered is this: Can the batteries in the Beoplay Eleven truly be replaced or are they able to claim “serviceable battery” on a technicality that allows them to throw away most of the earbud? I suspect that B&O’s technicians may be able to separate the driver side of the bud and reuse it while entirely discarding the other half of the housing containing some of the electronics and the battery. Assuming this is correct, it would still be a far cry from what the average person would consider a “serviceable battery”, where the expectation would be that the battery is replaced and the rest of the device is saved.

B&O also tries to point the finger a bit in their response, blaming the disposable nature of wireless earbuds on “limitations in battery technology”. What they’re referencing here is the disposable nature of lithium ion batteries. This is not news and doesn’t excuse the poor design of a product that buries a disposable component with a 2-3 year lifespan deep enough inside a device that it becomes inaccessible by the end user. In our teardown we referenced a couple of earbuds on the market that incorporate user replaceable batteries in their design, proving that it is perfectly possible to design for repair even in small form factor devices.