I got a set of Fairbuds XL at work because it made sense to buy something that could last a long time and be repaired and I really wanted to support Fairphone's basic premise — repairable gadgets with long support. Here's my experience with them that nobody asked for.
First of all, the sound is fine. Nothing exceptional but certainly not bad. I'd say they compare pretty well to my Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (80 Ohm) or my old Sennheiser Urbanite XL. They also sit pretty well on my head for extended periods of time, which is nice, but will obviously vary from person to person. They don't have any fancy Teams-integration, which is a plus for me but a deal-breaker to others. They hold battery very well. I haven't tested it in depth but I've used them for maybe 3 full workdays without charging them, so maybe around 24 hours of active use and they still had some juice left.
But the firmware... What a disappointment. The headphones have 3 settings, ANC, ambient and "normal". I personally prefer "normal" but the headphones don't remember the setting across restarts, so every time I turn them on I have to sit through the boot sound (because system sounds can't be interrupted), wait for the audio feedback to finish saying "connected", and if a second device is connected, "second device connected", then click a physical button, wait for it to finish saying "ambient sounds", and finally click a third time to hear it say: "noise cancelling off", and _then_ I can start using them. It's OK the first 5-10 times but then it just gets really, really annoying.
I went to their forums about a year ago to suggest it as a feature but learned that Fairphone actually don't interact with the forums, it's just user-to-user interaction, so suggestions don't really make it further from there. That's fair, so I contacted their support about it instead. They suggested that I contact the store that my workplace bought the headphones from. (I didn't think that was really going to solve the issue, so I chose to just ignore that.)
They've released 2 firmware updates since then, but no storing mode across reboots. They did however manage to glitch out the boot sound in one firmware update, so it played 2/3 of the audio only to interrupt itself and play the second half of the sound again. The last firmware update fixed that at least.
And before someone suggests that there might be no place to store aforementioned setting, they can store bluetooth pairings and EQ presets on the headphones. The noise cancellation preference could be stored in less than a byte. Unfortunately the firmware isn't OSS so I can't even fix it myself.
Wait, the firmware isn't OSS? Did they ever mention why? I completely understand that they can't open source stuff like a phone's modem firmware, but I don't get it here. Was it written in house or did they use some off the shelf solution (would explain why they can't open source it).
I mean, I know that fairphone doesn't market themselves as OSS centric (like purism does for example), but you'd think that it would fit their ewaste reduction goal in this case.
I agree. Making it OSS would definitely fit the spirit of their business, IMO, but the best we can do for now is to suggest that they open source it and hope.
I want to love these but at the price point you can basically buy 3-4 sets of (likely) technically comparable wireless earbuds that will (likely) last a year or two. How long can I expect fairbuds to last? I can't imagine it would be close to a decade even with replacing batteries
I guess that's also kinda my poorly made point -- I imagine that these earbuds are like any other electronic device in the fact that they'll break in a handful of years and end up being irreparable in some way that results in just replacing them. I'm not sure what the answer is to any of this of course
First of all, the sound is fine. Nothing exceptional but certainly not bad. I'd say they compare pretty well to my Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro (80 Ohm) or my old Sennheiser Urbanite XL. They also sit pretty well on my head for extended periods of time, which is nice, but will obviously vary from person to person. They don't have any fancy Teams-integration, which is a plus for me but a deal-breaker to others. They hold battery very well. I haven't tested it in depth but I've used them for maybe 3 full workdays without charging them, so maybe around 24 hours of active use and they still had some juice left.
But the firmware... What a disappointment. The headphones have 3 settings, ANC, ambient and "normal". I personally prefer "normal" but the headphones don't remember the setting across restarts, so every time I turn them on I have to sit through the boot sound (because system sounds can't be interrupted), wait for the audio feedback to finish saying "connected", and if a second device is connected, "second device connected", then click a physical button, wait for it to finish saying "ambient sounds", and finally click a third time to hear it say: "noise cancelling off", and _then_ I can start using them. It's OK the first 5-10 times but then it just gets really, really annoying.
I went to their forums about a year ago to suggest it as a feature but learned that Fairphone actually don't interact with the forums, it's just user-to-user interaction, so suggestions don't really make it further from there. That's fair, so I contacted their support about it instead. They suggested that I contact the store that my workplace bought the headphones from. (I didn't think that was really going to solve the issue, so I chose to just ignore that.) They've released 2 firmware updates since then, but no storing mode across reboots. They did however manage to glitch out the boot sound in one firmware update, so it played 2/3 of the audio only to interrupt itself and play the second half of the sound again. The last firmware update fixed that at least.
And before someone suggests that there might be no place to store aforementioned setting, they can store bluetooth pairings and EQ presets on the headphones. The noise cancellation preference could be stored in less than a byte. Unfortunately the firmware isn't OSS so I can't even fix it myself.
/rant