The AirPods Pro’s Silicone Ear Tips Are Custom Made And Won’t Be Easy To Replace

The thing with Apple products is that they tend to come with parts that are custom made. For example, for years, Apple’s iPhones used custom pentalobe screws that made it difficult for people to repair the phone. Now it looks like if you want to fix your AirPods Pro earbuds, you might find it pretty difficult as well.

This is according to a report from iFixit who did their customary teardown of Apple’s newly-launched AirPods Pro. In their teardown, they discovered that Apple is using custom molded silicone ear tips. According to iFixit, “Most silicone tips slide over a groove on the outside of the earbud. Apple’s design uses some fancy engineering and (surprise!) isn’t compatible with any typical silicone tips.”

What this means is that if for whatever reason you lose the supplied ear tips or if they are damaged or if they don’t fit quite as well as you would like, you won’t be able to just grab any old pair of ear tips from other earbuds or earphones and stick them on. So what happens if you need to get them replaced?

Thankfully though, according to John Gruber, he was told that the replacement ear tips only cost $4 which is pretty affordable. This is versus replacing the actual individual earbuds themselves, which if they are no longer under warranty or if you don’t have AppleCare+, will cost you $89 per earbud.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Audio, Gadgets
Tags: AirPods, airpods pro, Social Hit