Have you ever seen AirPods that look exactly like Appleās, but the box would say something like āAbble AirPods?ā Sometimes, manufacturers of counterfeit products donāt even change the companyās 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. ā[An AirPod Pro is] a marvel of miniaturization,ā writes Lumafieldās Jon Bruner at the start of a Twitter/X thread showing the CT scans. āEverything is packed into the curved enclosure efficiently with tightly integrated flexible PCBs.ā
The fakes look nothing like this on the inside. āThe fakes have a lot less going on. Components are connected by wires, not flexible PCBs. You wonāt find wires like this in any modern mobile Apple productā, he continues.
These products use wires instead of PCBs, and even the wires are soldered very poorly. He also highlights āthe lack of magnets, lower-quality plastic, and smaller batteriesā in the fake ones and also mentions their significantly lighter weight. āTo make up for the difference, their cases have weights,ā he says.
For some people, the sound quality isnāt important so long as the fakes look like enough Apple AirPods. Their aim is to show people theyāre wearing an Apple product. Itās 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. Appleās AirPods are not going to retail for $19, even on Cyber Monday.
