These days, you have to be careful what you buy. Counterfeit hardware is everywhere, especially when you’re purchasing things sight unseen over the Internet. [Jon Bruner] recently set out to look at a bunch of fake AirPod clones, and found that the similarities between the imposters and the real thing are only skin deep. A CT scan reveals all.
As you might expect, Apple’s AirPods are a fine example of miniaturization. They’re packed to the gills with hardware, with very little wasted space inside. Flexible PCBs hook up the electronics in an elegant and tidy fashion. Three tiny MEMS microphones are on board to capture the user’s voice and filter out noise. The battery that runs the show is a hefty lithium-ion coin cell which fills almost all the empty space behind the audio driver.
By contrast, the fakes look positively weedy inside. They cut out the bonus microphones, using just one to do the job. Wires link up the different components, with unimpressive blobby soldering visible that has splattered around the internal enclosure. Even the cases are lower-tech, with a weaker battery and a poorer charging solution. Hilariously, cheaping out on the tech makes the fakes lighter, so they compensate by adding weights to create a sense of heft for the user.
It’s amazing how much is revealed by a CT scan, that doesn’t even require opening the devices to tear them down. Fake hardware really is a scourge that many in the tech industry find themselves fighting against on a regular basis.
How much money can I save by buying a working AirPods clone?
That depend on how much you were willing to overpay for the fruit brand stuff.
I guess that with a bit of searching, you can find some second hand set for 4x retail price.
And if you buy nothing, you can save even more.
You DO know that “4x retail price” is the opposite of saving money, right?
For short term, maybe $150 or so. But if you want to be able to use it for many months or even a couple years, the cost of replacing cheap failed ear pods will add up to more than one genuine Apple set. Plus there’s that small chance the counterfeit has a ticking lipo waiting for the right time to spontaneously combust while in your ear.
a… have well designed equipment. They do even design in planned obsolesce – a bit of bonus.
Those do break too – less or more often. I would not say that $150 vs $25 (for semi decent wireless earphones) will add up even if you need to replace the latter after a year or two.
Airpods are way overpriced as all from a….
I would understand a…. charging 2x average price of no-brand – this would cover their R&D and all with quantities sold over 170mil over 2017 to 2021.
And that lipo indoctrination against cheapo… wow (or lol)
Why would you charge a pair of TWS earphones while they’re in your ears?
I’d agree. I’ve had cheap ones; audio quality was poor, frequent dropouts, battery life dropped very rapidly, controls were not reliable. Lost one. Went back to wired headphone.
I later picked up a set of real ones effectively free (pushed the order over a price point) and … wow … so much better. I’d instantly replace them if I lost them. Except i probably won’t because they don’t fall out of my ears, and they’ve got a built in AirTag.
Fakes are cheaper.
Certainly not the first time I’ve seen ballast added to make the cheap crap seem more legit. You will often find big useless weights inside charging bricks
Funniest one I have seen, At work we had a “server” for streaming video. It was built in a rack mount server case and it worked ok I guess. After a few years, it was time to decommission it and send it off to the recyclers. I always take a look inside of computers before we throw them away. When I opened this “server” all I found was a mini ATX motherboard and a brick. An actual BRICK .. LOL
Bricks in computer isn’t new. Hard drive factory did the same: https://hackaday.com/2022/04/14/weve-heard-of-bricking-a-hard-drive-but/
And inside those fake hard drives. Big 16TB portable hard drive has only real 64GB microSD card with faked firmware to report 16TB to computers, and a couple of the big steel bolts for weight.
I want to learn how they fake the capacity and alter things like block sizes so I can see if it’s possible to reconfigure a 4 gig SDHC card to be like a 2 gig SDSC card but with double the block size so it can hold 4 gig.
Why? To make the 4 gig cards work in older equipment like GPS receivers that don’t support SDHC but can read up to 4 gig.
For a very brief time before the group that sets standards for SD cards released the SDHC specification, memory card manufacturers took it upon themselves to get to 4 gig their way by simply doubling the block size while keeping the rest of the format identical to a 2 gig card.
While inefficient for small files they worked great for higher pixel count digital cameras and putting large map files into GPS receivers.
The true questions is how many you can pay fir simply destroy your ear with a dangerous product.
That’s weird. Just hours ago I posted this same link in a Nextdoor thread about someone hawking Airpods Pro in a Winco parking lot. Someone claimed they bought two for $40 each and they were real.
Don´t look behind, they´re already after you!
They were stolen
Years ago I bought a dead Chinese stereo amp rated at some delusional power output. Opened it up and in addition to a tiny transformer and heatsink there was a 5kg lead weight to give it some heft. Immediately gave up my plans to repair that turd.
Since real airpods sound like crap, I would prefer fakes. How bad could it be?
Won’t ever catch me buying fake Airpods or any other in the ear headphones. I cannot stand any of them.