Fairphone is a company that has continued to build repairable and durable smartphones with extensive support, and now it looks set to enter 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 (through 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 hint at the company’s use of recycled plastic. One side of the set has a knob and nub that looks like a dial (a la Apple’s AirPods Max) or a mini joystick, and the headset folds inward toward the soft headband.
You can see more of it WinFuture‘s images in the gallery below.
Fairphone’s headphones include visible USB-C and what appears to be an LED status light and mic opening, but sadly no 3.5mm jack. The exclusion shouldn’t be surprising, given that the company has removed the headphone jack in its latest repairable and more modernized Fairphone 4. And it’s 2023, which means a lot of things don’t have headphone jacks anymore.
WinFuture apparently obtained the leak via an unknown retailer, and while the Fairbuds XL don’t have a set price yet, WinFuture previously reported that they would cost €249 (or about $275). We’ve also yet to see these headphones in an exploded view of sorts to show just how repairable they really are. Apple’s AirPods Max is surprisingly one of the more repairable options on the market today, 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 durable headphones. Fairphone already sells true wireless earbuds, and while they aren’t advertised as repairable, they’re apparently made from recycled plastic.