We spent a lot of 2021 taking things apart. And we found a ton of interesting technology,
some unexpected surprises, and even some repairable devices.
Unfortunately, most companies are trending toward the less repairable side of the scale.
In fact you might not be surprised to hear that over half the devices
we tore down last year scored a 5 or below on our repairability scale.
That said, last year was also big for the right to repair, with several countries
considering legislation, and one country, France, actually starting to require repair information
and a disassembly rating for consumers on certain products.
To get 2022 started right, we’re going to recap the best and worst devices of 2021,
then tell you what we’ve got our eyes on in 2022.
Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first. If there's one category of devices that
almost always end up on our worst of list, it’s earbuds. In fact, when the original
AirPod's were released we were convinced that wireless earbuds could never be repairable.
This year Apple released a redesigned new pair of AirPods, but unfortunately
not much has changed for their repairability. AirPod's 3 are still tightly glued together,
requiring destructive surgery to disassemble. The biggest change we found was the battery,
which is now located in the bud rather than hidden away in the stem of the AirPod.
The battery was no longer soldered in place and is actually much easier to disconnect
thanks to a clever connector. A very interesting improvement, but not enough to move it above a
0 out 10 on our repairability scale, since taking them apart requires breaking them.
But Apple wasn’t the only Buds manufacturer to fail our repairability test.
London Based company Nothing released their inaugural product the Nothing Ear 1’s this year,
and unfortunately couldn’t score above a 1 on our repairability scale. Our teardown revealed
buds that were not only complicated to disassemble, but, like the AirPods,
their repairability is hampered by design choices that make reassembly almost impossible
These low scores might make you think that wireless earbuds just aren’t meant to be
repairable, and I could see how you’d think that. BUT, we’ve actually seen some manufacturers make
choices in this space that allow for things like replaceable batteries and easy (ish) disassembly.
IF you’re curious make sure to check out our Galaxy Beans,
I mean Buds Live, and our Galaxy Buds 2 teardowns.
The final bad device of 2022 year was the M1 silicon iMac. After you cut through the adhesive
on that super-expensive screen to get inside, there’s no socketed storage or memory to swap
for an upgrade, but there are thankfully at least a couple replaceable parts. Hopefully all you
ever need to replace are speakers and ports. The iMac earned a 2/10 on our repairability scale.
Now on to the good! Just in the last few months we saw 2 products that prove it’s
possible to make a modern, compelling device with sustainability and repairability in mind.
First, the awesome Framework laptop. This was pretty much our dream laptop. It’s easy enough
for a beginner to put together and take apart, and it’s made by a company committed to supplying
spare parts and information directly to consumers. It even has really cool plug and play modular
ports. The only thing I’d change is the addition of a dedicated GPU, and hopefully that will come
soon. The Framework laptop earned a 10 out of 10 on the repairability scale.
That wasn’t the only 10 out of 10 we gave out this
year though. While it’s not available in the US yet, we were able to get a Fairphone 4 and tear
that down. Fairphone has always been the poster child of how to make a repairable smartphone,
and the Fairphone 4 was no exception. With an opening procedure that only requires your fingers,
a battery that pops right out, the ability to expand storage with a micro SD card,
and a simple modular design, the Fairphone 4 also easily earned a 10/10 on our repairability scale.
In this new year, we’ve got the same hopes: we want everyone to be able to repair everything.
And it should be an interesting year on that front. Here are a
few things that have our attention in 2022.
Toward the end of last year, Apple announced a new repair program aimed at DIYers.
To get the full scoop you can watch this conversation we had with our CEO Kyle Wiens.
That program is supposed to start early this year, giving users access to iPhone
12 and 13 parts, guides, and tools, with M1 Mac support coming shortly after that.
Apple was incredibly vague on the details of how most of this works,
so we’re very interested to see how they’re going to pull this off, and whether it will
actually be a viable repair option for most people. I’m curious to see whether the iPhone 14
and the new MacBook Air will be more DIY friendly thanks to this program.
Speaking of Apple, 2021 gave us a totally redesigned MacBook Pro
that was considerably more repair-friendly.
With a new iMac Pro potentially coming this year,
it will be interesting to see whether it also gets a repairability bump, and maybe some modularity,
making it more like the super repair-friendly Mac Pro,
and less like the M1 iMac on our worst of list.
And, as always, I’m hopeful that this will be the
year Apple thinks about iPad repair … but I know that’s a lost cause.
Lots and lots of smart home tech There’s a new smart device standard
that has the potential to finally eliminate all the headache that comes with setting
up your fancy smart light bulbs. It’s called Matter, and though it probably won’t be ready
until later this year, I’m guessing it’s going to mean we’re about to see another
smart home device boom. We’ve taken apart some virtual assistants with varying degrees of ease,
and our friends at instrumental have done a few smart home device teardowns as well.
Thankfully, most of them don’t have batteries, which means the only reason you need to take them
apart is for less common electronics failures, or in the event of an unfortunate kitchen spill.
The really tough thing for smart home tech is that once it isn’t supported by software,
it’s often useless. (Looking at you, smart speakers without audio inputs).
For a sneak peek at some of this year’s worst devices, you can check out repair.org’s worst of
CES show, where they name and shame some of the worst products and product ideas from CES 2022.
And let us know if there’s anything cool or interesting you want us to look at from CES
in the next few months! We’re watching closely, but there’s a lot to miss.