Sustainability has become a seriously tired refrain in the world of big tech. It’s ostensibly the reason why nothing comes bundled with a charger anymore, and why seemingly every high-profile gadget launch event now includes a self-congratulatory segment about how some components in the device are made partially from reclaimed ocean plastic or recycled aluminum. That’s all well and good, but coming from behemoth corporations like Samsung or Apple, it can come across as greenwashing lip-service meant to preempt environmental criticism.

Netherlands-based Fairphone walks the walk a little more convincingly. Fairphone has made a name for itself selling durable, user-serviceable devices like the Fairphone 4 — sustainability is baked into the company’s DNA. The €249 Fairbuds XL bring that ethos to over-ear ANC headphones for the first time: Fairphone sells replacements for a whole slew of the headphones’ components, and if you can work a screwdriver, you can repair them yourself from the comfort of home. It’s a great idea, and I really like a lot of things about the Fairbuds XL. I just wish they sounded better.

Fairphone Fairbuds XL

With tons of user-replaceable components, a unique aesthetic, and strong ANC, the Fairbuds XL are a largely successful first attempt at over-ear headphones from Fairphone. Audio quality isn’t all there, though — and that’s a pretty big flaw in €249 headphones.

Battery Life

26 hours (ANC on); 30 hours (ANC off)

Bluetooth

5.1

Noise Cancellation

Yes

Microphones

6

Weight

11.6 oz

Colors

Green, Black

Supported codecs

AAC, SBC, aptX, aptX HD

Folding/Storage

Yes

Charging

USB-C

Multipoint

Yes

Retail price

€249

Pros

• You can repair them at home
• Unique look with a striking green color option
• Thumbstick controls are neat
• Nice ANC

Cons

• Middling sound
• Sustainability aside, pricey for the experience

Price and availability

The Fairphone Fairbuds XL are available in the UK and continental Europe directly from Fairphone’s website and local retailers for £219 or €249. The headphones come in either black or a lovely green and orange colorway. You can’t officially get the Fairbuds XL in the US; some unlicensed third parties sell imports on sites like Amazon, but I wouldn’t recommend going that route.

Design and hardware

Environmental friendliness is Fairphone’s whole deal, and in keeping with that vision, the Fairbuds XL are made to be disassembled and repaired by the user. None of their parts are glued together, and Fairphone both sells replacement components and provides video walkthroughs for replacing all the various bits. You can order new padding, speakers, batteries, and more, and swap them out with no training or specialized tools required. A good pair of headphones could feasibly last your entire life if not for parts like these degrading over time, and I’d love to see other manufacturers take a similar tack, unlikely as that may be.

Despite all the Fairbuds XL’s removable parts, the headphones boast an impressive IP54 rating for dust and water resistance. That’s not especially common in over-ear headphones at any price point, and it’s good to know that light rain won’t compromise the Fairbuds XL’s long-haul sustainability.

For a pair of headphones able to be disassembled and reassembled by regular people, the Fairbuds XL look and feel remarkably nice. The headband and earcups are plush and comfortable, and I don’t get the same kind of fatigue I normally experience from hours of wearing over-ear headphones (Sony’s otherwise-excellent WH-1000XM5 are a big offender there for me). I love the look, too — especially on this green colorway I’ve been using.

Part and parcel with the Fairbuds XL’s sustainable reparability, there are no capacitive touch controls on the headphones. Instead, there’s a short thumbstick on the back of the right ear cup for controlling playback and power, plus one button pulling duty for pairing and ANC control. The thumbstick took a little getting used to, but it’s a neat, tactile way to interact with a pair of headphones, and I kind of miss it when I’m wearing a different pair. It also provides a nice pop of color, being orange on the green model and a more subtle dark green on the black pair.

There’s USB-C for both charging and wired audio input, but there’s unfortunately no 3.5mm headphone jack, which seems like an odd omission.

Audio and ANC

As much as I admire both the concept and the aesthetic of the these headphones, I don’t think audio quality quite lives up to their €249 price tag. The Fairbuds XL sound decidedly okay. There are a handful of EQ presets to choose from, and on the bassy Tokyo setting, the sound signature is how I like it: warm, but maintaining relatively sharp highs.

But there’s a strange sort of muffled quality to the sound in a lot of tracks, especially in the midrange. Maybe it’s a compression issue, but vocals and percussion in particular can come across like I’m hearing them through some kind of thin barrier, like I accidentally left some packing material inside the earcups (I didn’t, I checked). The headphones support AAC, SBC, and aptX HD, but I’ve had the same experience across different devices using different codecs.

At their best, the headphones sound pretty good: the thick bass and distorted robot vocals in Daft Punk’s Around the World, for example, come across great. But other tracks really suffer. Is This It by The Strokes, already a relatively low-fidelity recording, sounds downright unpleasant with the Fairbuds XL’s quirks. Details can get a little muddy in busier arrangements, too.

Call quality is similarly uninspiring. Recordings I took on the Fairbuds XL show they have a harder time with background noise than many other headphones and earbuds do, with my voice coming through unusually quiet in noisy environments compared to other headsets I have on hand.

ANC performance is better than I expected it to be, though, successfully drowning out the noise of a TV in the next room or the clatter of my (non-mechanical) keyboard with media playing at low volumes. It’s not up there with the best from heavyweights like Sony or Bose, but it feels more thorough than what you’ll get from, say, the premium Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless.

Software and features

The Fairbuds XL are managed through the Fairbuds app. With it, you can choose from a handful of EQ presets, all named after major cities. As mentioned, I like the bassy Tokyo preset just fine, but if you can’t find one that suits your taste, there’s a customizable five-band EQ, confusingly listed along with the presets as “Studio.”

The app is also supposed to let you order replacement parts by tapping the component you want to swap out on a 3D model of the headphones, but as of writing, these all lead to 404 errors on Fairphone’s website (you can grab components directly from Fairphone’s spare parts store, if you need them).

The headphones themselves are a little light on more advanced features. There’s no on-ear detection here; the Fairbuds XL will keep playing when you take them off unless you manually pause your media. Fast Pair isn’t supported, either, so getting set up on your phone takes a little more menu-digging than it does for a lot of other headphones and earbuds. But there is multipoint connectivity support, so you can connect two devices at once — just complete the pairing process on both, then select the Fairbuds XL from each’s Bluetooth menu.

Battery life and charging

Fairphone quotes the Fairbuds XL’s battery life at a respectable 26 hours between charges with ANC enabled, and that’s proven to be true in my time with the headphones. That shakes out to charging twice a week with what I’d consider heavy use. There are ANC headphones that’ll see you through 40 or 50 hours or even more on one charge, but those exceptional options are priced accordingly.

Charging over USB-C is quick enough, with a full charge taking under three hours. Fairphone says the Fairbuds XL’s battery can be depleted and recharged 500 times while keeping close to its original capacity — at two charges a week, that’s a useful lifespan of something like four and a half years. You can order replacement batteries from Fairphone, and installing a new battery is exceedingly easy: just pop the panel off the left earcup, pull the old battery out, slot in the new one, and snap the panel back on. The simple procedure doesn’t require any tools and took me maybe 10 seconds to complete.

Competition

Fairphone pretty much has the market cornered on user-repairable ANC headphones. If that’s what you’re after — and you don’t want to compromise on the sustainability aspect — your decision should be pretty simple.

But there are plenty of good headphones that cost the same €249, or even less. As of writing, Sony’s WH-1000XM4 are available for €250 on the dot from Amazon Germany, and similar prices in other European markets. Those headphones offer better sound, better ANC, and better battery life than the Fairbuds XL do, though Sony’s headphones are nowhere near as easy to service as the Fairbuds. I don’t think they look as nice, either.

If you don’t care about noise-canceling, you might try something like the Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT2. Those headphones won’t work as well for you if you often listen in noisy environments, but they offer great, neutral sound and phenomenal battery life of 50 hours or longer on a charge, plus Fast Pair support, all for less than €200. But again, if you need something you can easily repair on your own, Fairphone has Audio-Technica beat.

Should you buy them?

I like a lot of things about the Fairbuds XL. They’re comfortable, they look great, and their ANC is very capable. Fairphone’s commitment to sustainability, trite as that concept has become in the tech world, is also admirable. If your Bose QuietComfort 45 break or their battery stops holding a charge, you’ll probably have to send them off for expensive repairs, or worse, toss them in e-waste recycling and buy a new pair. These solutions are costly, both environmentally and financially. By contrast, you can fix most things that might go wrong with the Fairbuds XL at home in just a few minutes, using affordable, first-party replacement parts. I don’t want to understate how wonderful that is.

But these headphones just don’t sound good enough to compete directly with similarly priced options from more established brands in the audio space. At best, they sound pretty good — and at an asking price of €249, that’s not going to be good enough for most people. It’s fantastic that you could theoretically keep these headphones for decades (assuming Fairphone continues to offer replacement components), but sounding like they do, you probably wouldn’t want to.

If your number-one priority is sustainability and you’re flexible on audio quality, more power to you — the Fairbuds XL should be right up your alley. But if you’re just looking for all-around great headphones and being green is more of a perk than a hard requirement, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Fairphone Fairbuds XL

With tons of user-replaceable components, a unique aesthetic, and strong ANC, the Fairbuds XL are a largely successful first attempt at over-ear headphones from Fairphone. Audio quality isn’t all there, though — and that’s a pretty big flaw in €249 headphones.