FairbudsXL - Better headband materials?

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For £250 when I bought them, my FairbudsXL have been… OK. Just OK.

ANC issues aside (that annoyingly I’d have to send my set to RMA for :frowning:) I’ve noticed the headband is a terrible for longevity. I don’t even think there’s any metal in the construction! Similar headphones for the price Seem to at least use some metal in their construction, which in turn I would argue may offset the downsides in their poor repairability.

Meanwhile, due to the largely-plastic construction of the FBXL headband, there’s a good chance if you’re unlucky (say, they get sat on or something) your headphones are suddenly two cups on a string. Granted, a repairable pair of cups on a string (Once I’ve paid for the new parts & waited for them to arrive), the build quality feels about as good as a pair of £80 Anker Soundcore Q30s.

I don’t mean to bash the product at all - I bought these because I explicitly wanted repairable headphones. I bought my previous pair of Anker headphones for the same reason (Well, just that they had an aftermarket for replacement earpads), and I explicitly saved extra to get this pair over less-repairable alternatives: I believe in repairing and maintaining hardware!

But, just because I believe in repairing hardware doesn’t mean I want to fashion a splint for my headphones because they’re made of brittle plastic. I’d love even an optional replacement headband option that has some sturdier construction because I admittedly do use these headphones a lot more than most would!

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Just saying and not trying to defend Fairphone with their very poor choice of quality assurance measures as one can find plenty of examples here in this forum.

I’ve been using my FBXL for a couple of years now and never had any issues (except the ANC issues, which I decided to just live with and not go through the Fairphone support nightmare that seems to become the new standard)

But truth be told it is still the best product experience so far. I had other headphones with similar price ranges and specs. Very often something made of plastic, really small and worth just a few pennies/cents would break and render the entire headphones completly useless… and on top of it there were no replacement parts or repair guides (let alone the option to actually open these) offered. Something I’d call planned obsolescence.

So the current status quo is pretty much subpar but I think Fairphone knows that and at least tries to improve assuming higher management and marketing don’t continue to eradicate the best of Fairphone.

Apart from that it seems to me that important parts like the hinges really are made of some sort of metal. I noticed that right from the start because all my other headphone were solely made of plastic… I’m a little hesitant to break my FBXL on purpose just to make sure, I’m right though.

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