What you need to know
- AirPods Pro went on sale yesterday.
- iFixit has completed its customary teardown.
- AirPods Pro are full of...lots of small things.
The arrival of AirPods Pro yesterday seems to have gone well both for the people who bought them and the company that sells them. Early reviews are very much on the positive side of awesome, and queues around the world suggest people are eager to pay the $249 asking price (opens in new tab), too. And now we know what that money gets you.
The teardown masters at iFixit have done what they do best and we now know exactly what's on the inside of AirPods Pro.
The thing that immediately jumps out at me is the fact that everything is so, so small. I'm aware that's a silly thing to say for something so small on the outside, but still. Seeing all of the chips, batteries, and boards laid bare is still a sight to behold.
That's absolutely the case with the new system-in-package (SIP) that powers AirPods Pro. It's a little rectangle that sits inside the earbuds and although it might not look much, it's what makes all of the magic happen. And iFixit notes that it's even smaller than the SIP used in AirPods. Impressive.
Unfortunately it's clear that AirPods Pro aren't any more repairable than AirPods, which is a shame although not entirely surprising.
I'd really suggest checking out the full teardown including a fancy X-ray video of how everything looks. You don't want to miss that!
Perhaps most impressive is the iFixit team's ability to take things like AirPods Pro apart without destroying them. I didn't even manage to open the packaging without making a mess.
Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.
Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
