So i took the plunge and ordered both the fairbuds and the fairbuds xl as they were 25% off for valentines weekend, they’ve arrived today and the fact i have had to send two emails to support as they both have a pretty bad fault has really dampened the mood.
With the earbud Fairbuds, i have an extremely annoying rattle/jingling sound in my right earbud whenever i touch the earbud or move my head too much.
i have done their websites troubleshooting for both products, leading me to message support twice to ether get them RMA’d or even returned and refunded, considering this is day one of me owning them both.
I get that they’re a smaller group of people compared to the competition, and i do trusst the support team to resolve me issue like they have in the past, but surely there is some sort of QA testing in house, i adore fairphones mission and the majority of their hardware is top notch for what they are doing. But i honestly feel like a beta tester when i buy their products, to the point where im considering not bothering to spend my money on them in the future, which really hurts to say.
hope everyone has a happy valentines, as usual i’ll post updates when i receive them.
I only can say about the Fairbuds (the small ones) that they are pretty bad. They have a very poor connection (with the Fairphone 3 that has also not the best Bluetooth connection, they were unusable outside and with the Fairphone 5, they have issues if you are in the city). Also the mic is not reliable as it filters out your own voice as there is background noise. I do not understand why they are advertising them so much as they urgently need a second hardware revision to fix these issues.
I returned them at last because they are really not usable.
I’m having connection issues now with the fairbuds earbuds on the 2nd day in. Still waiting on their support email, which I know they take their time on. Honestly I might make a DOA claim for the both of them and default to getting my money back.
I really wish I could get on with them, but I’m not keeping them with only the promise of firmware fixes and the such, it’s a real real shame.
I have had the Fairbuds for almost a year and they’ve been unusable for making calls. The call comes through fine but the people I’m talking to complain that my voice fades in and out. Not at all usable for work calls which is what I bought them for. I’ve been hoping for a firmware patch but at this point I’m wondering if it’s a hardware issue.
Little update, I sent my fairbuds XL in for repair and today recieved them. Reminder I sent them in because the hardware was clicking when moving my head, I’m not sure what happened during the repair, I think they swapped them as they came in new packaging but it’s really tricky to find out what exactly they did as sending the case number to the website that handed the repair just gives me reference and UPS tracking numbers, no summery of repair at all. Not like that matters because I took them straight out, plonked them onto my head and they are still doing exactly what I reported. Ether this is just how they’re built which is disappointing, or they’ve just sent my old ones back without repairing them. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do now with them, I’m going to hopefully move on to my earbud Fairbuds as surely a constant rattling isn’t normal, aswell as now I’m hearing a low electronic buzz in the other earbud now.
I have been saving the email transcripts so when this is done I’ll post them here.
No, actually that was actually really fast, I believe only a week or so. The long period of updates were because it took that long for support to start the RMA procedure, and unfortunately it took me reaching out to the live chat to properly start it.
I also noticed the BLE connection for the fairbuds is inconsistent at best too. Causing the in app battery level to display N/A and the equaliser to straight up not work. I found This post about the Bluetooth LE issue but unfortunately it timed out and locked up, stopping discussion. Even though, at least in my case, it’s STILL relevant
Edit: yes I tried every troubleshooting method suggested in this post, location services on. Reseting both earbuds and reinstallin app etc.
I sent an email support asking if it was possible for a return and refund. All these problems I’m having with both these products, with the nfortunately long wait times and gaps between emaila. plus the bugs that are months/years old in this forum without communication or fixes from FP.
It really pains me to ask for them to do this, but I just can’t ride on promises anymore, and as a knock on effect, I unfortunately think the FP5 might be my one and only FP device, depending on how 2027 effects device repairability. I’ll keep it as long as I can with repairability and longevity being important to me, but unless a major change happens with this company, I’m not confident in them anymore.
