I’ve had these since 2021, while they are a bit bulky I am happy with them and use them mostly around the city to listen to podcasts and the occasional bit of music.
After they would first slowly show signs of not holding their full charge anymore, the batteries completely died on me after some 3 years. I was fully prepared to have to throw them out when I learned that the batteries are just standard cells and can be easily swapped.
Before you start, get the following:
Ok, let’s go:
Use a spudger or ideally two guitar
picks and wedge them in to the thin gap between the top cover and the
base of the earphones. Don’t worry about breaking anything. As long as
the material of your tools is plastic, you won’t damage anything. This
is by far the most tedious step of the process (if you don’t have the
picks). There is a little bit of adhesive behind the lid, so once you
get the halfs to seperate you might have to widdgle a little.
With the phillips head remove the two
screws that secure the visible part in place and then carefully lift it
out, flip it over. There is a ribbon cable connecting the touch sensor
and LED on the top to PCB deeper inside the earpiece.
To remove the old battery I found
it easiest to push the spudger into the little gap in the plastic where
the ribbon cable connects to the top part. It is also glued in; be
careful not to pull out the contact points as well. If possible try to
preserve the glue, it will come in handy when securing the new battery
in place. I also scraped off what was stuck to the old battery and
pushed it back into the housing.
Before putting in the new battery
make sure to check the writing on it or use the shape as a reference to
figure out which side is the negative pole. Put that side down, touching
to the contacts. The replacement batteries I got where a different brand
and had all the labeling on the plus pole. While the original VARTA
branded batteries had it exactly reversed. On my first attempt I didn’t
pay attention and put them in the wrong way around.
