hey jonathan do you think you can help me out with
these these are fully
earwax i've noticed this myself when using my old earpods over the years
they clog up in the mesh of these headphones and at points i got so bad
that i couldn't even hear out of them in fact these are sarah's second pair
after clogging up her last set so i think this is probably
a pretty common problem being a bit of an
earwax producer myself i've often wondered if seeing a bunch of ear wax on
my airpods meant that i'm ruining my ears but after
reaching up to a local hearing specialist he told me in an email that one
everyone has different earwax some softer some
harder having no earwax is the genetic anomaly
two i always worry that i'm pushing earwax further in my ear
but he said that oftentimes you're actually helping remove earwax from your
ears hence this mess three
also if you are someone who cleans their ears frequently
that could be causing your ear wax to become softer making it all the more
easy to clog your earbuds and four if you're seeing lots of earwax
you don't need to worry about your health just the health of your airpods
obviously the easiest and most wasteful solution to the problem is to just buy
a new set of airpods which is what sarah did the first time hers got clogged
but that's untenable apple does service
airpods but it's 70 each for a repair or replacement or it's
50 just to get a battery service from what
i can tell it's the same service just one's cheaper so
make sure to say battery service to save 20 bucks so between 100
and 140 to deal with a naturally occurring body excretion
it all seems steep there have got to be better ways
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now where was i ah yes wax filled air
pods in doing this research i came across a
little startup called podswap founded by florida entrepreneurs
emily alpert and emma stritzinger the company swaps your old airpods with
refurbished ones and then they refurbish yours remarkably
they worked out how to replace the battery and clean airpods
at fifty 50 to swap a pair of first gen airpods and 60 for a second gen set
they're certainly a compelling option
so i got this pair of air pods from a colleague
i can just show you uh what they look
like um how often do you deal with
airpods like this it's nothing we
haven't seen before yeah um yeah i mean it's no secret that
airpods are pretty gross um so this is something we deal with
every day at pod swap like it's no surprise that people have
um sound issues when they send their earpods to us because they're so filled
with ear wax so this actually um is one of the reasons
why you might experience issues with sound on your ear pods does the earwax like
get really smushed through the mesh yes
we've seen air pods that we're shocked people can even hear out of
because they're so clogged up like from
the back through the front it's just um it's unbelievable
but you know they've been out since 2016 so it makes sense that someone's using
them for the past four years and it just builds up we have
to open them up and really get in there let's just say that so then
um what does it mean for me as i embark and try and clean
these airpods often times when you attempt to clean them yourself like we
have a lot of people who damage them ultimately
so careful out there yeah well thanks
for all the help okay so let's see what these pod swap
airpods look like and how clean they are
oh yeah okay let's see this other one
okay these are pretty clean so i wonder
what's going on behind the mesh let's find out
so one of the concerns i have with cleaning air pods is that
the earwax has been pushed through the mesh and so all i'm going to be doing is
cleaning the surface and not actually addressing the problem so i want to know
how bad it can get behind the mesh
so i'm going to sacrifice these old earpods that i've had since my iphone 5
and see what's what key the music
i have no idea what i'm doing so
uh there's a seam here and i wanna get
into it looking at i fix it they used
a knife i believe
that these are glued together and with a bit of heat
and a bit of pressure maybe i can uh pry
these apart let's just see
it's warm um oh yeah it's warm
oh yes yes it worked
hey oh okay but i do need to get the speaker off now
yes oh i got it okay here we go
interesting it's not full of ear wax but it has gone through ever so lightly
oh but
when the light goes through it it's orange
so that's delicious
all right so i think this is a design
issue with the release of the airpods in 2012 apple made a big deal about how
these headphones could fit comfortably in more people's ears
they use this funnel shape to help but what doesn't help is where the mesh is
placed right near the tip so if you're a waxy individual
you can probably see the problem
so what about cleaning them well
i discovered this cute little thing recently it's
an earbuds washing machine from a company called cardlax
who also make a portable muscle stimulator no matter
now this is a kickstarter and they kindly sent over a prototype to try
cleaning one of these airpods so let's see what it can do
and if you want to pre-order one they're currently going for about 50
on kickstarter all right
gloves
not bad still some residue here and there it looks like it was
used it's probably good for maintenance but what if you want to try it the
manual way looking at some videos on youtube i also
learned of a irish phone repair shop called phone fix crap that's been
posting very gross microscopic videos of airpods being cleaned
it looks like he has a thin pick he uses to clear out the wax and scrubs it with
some sort of liquid and brush and sucks it out with a vacuum if it's really bad oh god i can't i
can't watch this anymore also when in my interaction with the ear
specials he mentioned hearing aid cleaning tools which is interesting
so we ordered a set off amazon for about twelve dollars
look at these fine picks and brushes
it might be a big help
oh my gosh it's really coming out
all right uh let's go up to sarah and uh
get her to see how well i've done
sarah i think i've cleaned them
oh my gosh let's see if you can guess
which one i cleaned manually and which one i cleaned with the earbuds
washing machine all right what do you think of how they look this one looks
way cleaner than this one for sure okay i guess the real test is
by trying them out yes let's see if you actually hear music
okay let's try this side first
okay so i still have to like turn it up
a fair bit to see it does it sound better it does
sound better okay let me try the other side
i don't know if they sound better okay here's the thing
is i have to still turn my audio up to like more than halfway
to hear something right now put them both in okay
there's one sound better than the other
this one does sound a little better okay
but they're still not like they were when they were brand new yeah
so i hope these are charged up enough these are from pod swap
let's see if we can oh wow
it's way louder already oh really
yeah insane difference
oh this sounds way better like i can
turn it down to here and it sounds loud enough clearly
i've failed haven't i yeah i'd say so
okay
well we have a conclusion very sad one
so i wasn't able to do it myself i'm quite surprised and disappointed
emma and emily at pod swaps certainly know what they're doing
me on the other hand don't god this makes me want to keep on trying until i
get it
the disposability of airpods has been an issue since they came out almost
five years ago so it's no surprise that we'd want to keep them running as long
as possible and as annoying as it may seem i think
maintenance is an important way to reduce the likelihood of your airpods
getting filled with earwax so if things do get bad and your
batteries thin pot swap offers what seems to be the most cost effective and
environmentally friendly way of breathing new life into older airpods which is remarkable
considering how tightly these things are glued together
thank you for listening into this Mac Address if you too
are a producer of earwax give us a like and if you've clogged up a set of
earbuds before might as well subscribe i'm also curious if any of you have
found a really great working solution to this problem
let me know in the comments below because i'm desperate to figure this thing out