Are you looking for earbuds that let you enjoy music on your commute without costing you so much that you have to give up your daily iced coffee? Well, Anker’s Soundcore Space A40 wireless earbuds are 40 percent off right now, down from $80 to $48. The deal has brought the earbuds down to a record-low price — $1 off, but, we’ll take it.
We’ve chosen Anker’s Soundcore Space A40 as our pick for the best budget wireless earbuds in 2024 for several reasons. First, the earbuds have the quality and features — including active noise cancellation — that you usually have to spend a lot more money to get.
They offer wireless charging, an IPX4 water-resistance rating, and the ability to connect to two devices simultaneously. The battery lasts about 10 hours on its own and up to 50 hours with the case. You can also get up to about four hours of battery backup after just ten minutes of charging.
The sound quality won’t be at the same level as the sound you get from Bose or Sony, with fine details being a bit faded. However, the Soundcore Space A40 earbuds do offer custom EQ tools through the Soundcore app, so you can tweak it a bit. Overall, between the ANC and the pretty good comfort offered, these earbuds are a bargain at this price.
Bang & Olufsen announced its new $499 premium earbuds, the Beoplay XI, in November, touting among other things their replaceable batteries “for durability” and aligning with the EU’s imminent device repair requirements.
But the iFixit teardown tells a more complicated story about actually replacing those batteries, describing the process of simply opening the case as “a very difficult and laborious task… even for a trained technician.”
And inside, the battery is attached to other components in a way that requires heat to remove it, which in itself would not comply with upcoming EU regulations. Given all the work involved, the earbuds scored an extremely poor 1/10 on iFixit’s repairability scorecard.
Bang & Olufsen said the earbuds’ design “allows for battery replacement by service,” which, as iFixit notes, suggests this isn’t a repair you can do yourself at home.
It was eventually possible to take one of the earbuds apart without damaging any of the electronics inside, but the laborious teardown raises questions about how feasible and durable it would be to replace the battery, even if done at a B&O service center.
After opening the case and finding “a plastic weld mark preventing access to the battery,” iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari noted in the video that, “at the very least, any battery replacement service would have to completely dispose of the plastic housing.”
“I’d love to see B&O’s process for replacing these batteries,” Mokhtari wrote in the blog post. “I’m willing to bet it’s neither cheap nor wasteful, but I’d love to be proven wrong.”
The teardown also revealed that the Beoplay Eleven is a “carbon copy” of the 2022 Beoplay EX internally. “Even the peel-off film on the back of each earbud says ‘Beoplay EX’ — not ‘Beoplay Eleven,'” Mokhtari wrote.
In a statement provided to Engadget, Bang & Olufsen said, “When a customer purchases a set of Beoplay Eleven earphones, we offer serviceability from our certified B&O service center to promote circular product choices over disposable alternatives.
The process we have established ensures that the service-life span of the earphones can be extended and provides our customers with the option to replace the product at the point where battery performance is no longer adequate due to limitations in battery technology.
By offering a service solution for our earphones, we want to give our customers access to join the path towards a circular future.”
The company cites its modular Beoplay H100 headphones and Beosound Level speakers as “great examples of this”, as well as “older products such as the Beogram 4000 turntable and the Beosound 9000 CD-player, which are still in use and repaired on a daily basis by our service centre in Struer.”