Have you ever seen AirPods that look exactly like Appleâs, but the box would say something like âAbble AirPods?â Sometimes, manufacturers of counterfeit products donât even change the companyâs name on the box in an attempt to trick the consumers into thinking that they are genuine products.
Most of us are aware of this and have probably come across these products multiple times. Recently, a series of CT scans were done by Lumafield (via Yahoo News) on real and fake AirPods to see how different they are inside.
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So, apart from sounding terrible, how bad are these fake products? The scans show that they skimp on a lot of internal components that the Apple AirPods feature. â a marvel of miniaturization,â writes Lumafieldâs Jon Bruner at the start of a Twitter/X thread showing the CT scans. âEverything is packed into the curved enclosure efficiently with tightly integrated flexible PCBs.â
The fakes look nothing like this on the inside. âThe fakes have a lot less going on. Components are connected by wires, not flexible PCBs. You wonât find wires like this in any modern mobile Apple productâ, he continues.
These products use wires instead of PCBs, and even the wires are soldered very poorly. He also highlights âthe lack of magnets, lower-quality plastic, and smaller batteriesâ in the fake ones and also mentions their significantly lighter weight. âTo make up for the difference, their cases have weights,â he says.
For some people, the sound quality isnât important so long as the fakes look like enough Apple AirPods. Their aim is to show people theyâre wearing an Apple product. Itâs the same when someone knowingly buys a knockoff handbag or pair of sneakers. This is the group of people that the folks behind making fake products absolutely adore.
While all of this is helpful information to distinguish between real and fake AirPods, an extraordinarily dramatic price cut is another very common sign that always gives it away anyway. Appleâs AirPods are not going to retail for $19, even on Cyber Monday.