Repairing My Sony Ear Buds
A couple days ago I wrote about how my Sony ear buds were dead and how I was on the hunt for a replacement pair. I ended up replacing the batteries instead, but did it work?
After my original post I received a shit load of recommendations from you guys. They ranged from very cheap options, to ridiculously expensive ones. Far and away the most recommended ear buds were the Nothing Ear 2. So if this battery repair goes belly up, I think I’ll nab a pair of them (I might even grab some on Black Friday as a spare).
Anyway, a couple of people mentioned that it was a known issue with the XM4s as a result of a poor firmware update that kills the battery over time.
It most often affects the right-hand ear, where the battery will last less than hour. This is exactly what I was seeing - so I assumed I probably had the same problem.
I had a look online for guides on how to replace the battery and it seemed quite straightforward, so I figured I’d buy a pair of replacement batteries for £20 and decided to give it a go.
Once the batteries were replaced, I left them in the clamps for a couple of hours to let the fresh glue dry, then placed them back in the case to charge overnight.
This morning I cracked open the case and checked the battery levels on my Sony app - both were reporting as 100%. That was a good start as the right-hand battery would only charge to 90% previously. I also noticed there was a firmware upgrade available, so I did that, which took around an hour.
I’ve now been listening to music with noise cancelling enabled (as the kids have a snow day in school and I’m working from home) for around an hour. Here’s how the battery situation looks:
Ok, so we’re over 80% on each ear bud after around 2 hours of use. Granted they weren’t playing any music for the first hour while I was updating the firmware, so let’s conservatively say that’s around 5 hours of actual use for a full charge? I’m thrilled with that! If I managed to get another 2.5 years out of these batteries, I’ll be absolutely chuffed. Fuck, if I get another year out of them, I’ll still be happy.
There was one small casualty during the repair process though; you have to use a heat gun to warm the glue before splitting the case. I managed to overheat one of the cases which caused a little droop in the top of the case. Time will tell if that’s affected the seal and waterproofing.
So there you go folks, instead of defaulting to “I need to replace this thing because it’s now broken” there’s always the option to repair.