Today I'm going to tear down two of the most popular exercising workout earbuds, from the
inside: the JayBird X3's and the PowerBeats 3.
And I'll explain why one in miles ahead of the other.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
Now the PowerBeats 3 are pretty famous.
If you haven't heard of Beats or seen the Beats logo before, you might be living under
a rock.
Beats spent some pretty major money on mainstream advertising, but that doesn't always mean
they have a good product.
The JayBird X3's retail for half of what Beats cost, but aren't as heavily advertised.
These are more of an inside your ear design and I've been using my pair for the last 6
months or so and I'm happy with them.
I switched to the X3's after 3 different sets of Beats earbuds died on me over the course
of one year.
So let's analyze the construction and build quality to find out why all of my Beats headphones
couldn't last as long as one JayBird.
Breaking into the JayBird X3's is rather difficult.
Everything is very securely molded shut, which is a good thing for workout headphones.
It will keep sweat, rain, and water from destroying the internal circuitry.
After shaving apart the headphones for a good while, it was able to separate the speaker
from the battery.
These happen to have an advertised 8 hour battery life, and I would regularly get about
6 or so out of mine – more than enough to be convenient.
I could charge them up every few workouts and be just fine.
The speaker itself is pretty small, surprisingly small, which might be why the battery is able
to last so long.
The volume and power controls are usually where wireless headphones start failing.
These headphones were fully functional before I started taking them apart.
But the one thing I did hate on these X3's was the non-standard charging method.
Now, I have plenty of micro USB and USB-C chargers lying around, but if I forgot this
proprietary dock thingy for my X3 earbuds, I'm just out of luck.
It's kind of annoying to be honest.
We should USB-C all the things.
Once we are inside I'll pop the rest of the circuits out from the plastic housing and
this is where things start to get really interesting, and where we can start to tell a quality built
product from an inferior product.
But to make the test fair, let's find the circuits of the PowerBeats first.
The Beats were much easier to get inside.
A simple stab to the speaker housing and it would start to separate.
So we can already start to get an idea of how the water resistance is between the two
headphones.
The speaker of the Beats is about twice the size of the one on the JayBirds, but it also
does not go as deep into your ear as the JayBirds do, so it does need to be larger to match
the same volume level because of that added distance from your eardrum.
Beats advertises a 12 hour battery life on these things, and I would regularly get about
4 or 5 hours out of them.
Not good at all.
The speaker cones of both headphones are made from the plastic rubber combination, so that's
good.
It's the same style that we saw inside of the Apple airpods.
But, we still need to find the circuitry.
Inside the volume controls of the Beats we find the first fatal flaw and one of the reasons
why my first set of Beats died.
This section isn't water resistant.
Moisture can easily seep inside of these little holes in the housing and corrode the connections.
My volume up just stopped working on one of my sets entirely, and that's kind of an important
button.
The rest of the circuits are inside the earbud housing next to the micro USB charging port
– easy enough to open up.
There is no rubber ring around the charging port hole like we see on cellphones, which
means that moisture could very easily get inside from multiple locations.
I'll show you why that's a bad thing.
Popping the circuit board completely out of the plastic housing, I'll drip a few drops
of water onto the board, and you can see how the droplets cling to the surface.
Water and electronics do not go well together.
This is how things short out and get corroded and then die.
Water is clinging to all that important stuff.
I could feel the board heating up in my hands as the leftover juice from the battery was
shorting out along those wires.
Now the reason I bought my X3's in the first place was because on their website they say
there is a double hydrophobic coating, and you can see what that means when I apply some
water droplets to the surface of the circuit board.
The board has a coating that repels moisture and won't let the droplets cling to the surface,
keeping the electronics from shorting out.
And it's just another added layer of protection if moisture does somehow manage to get inside
of the sealed plastics.
The extra protection is a good thing.
Beats, on the other hand, do not have that hydrophobic coating, nor is the body well
sealed.
It also has a terrible battery life and is twice the price, so I would just stay away
from Beats altogether.
JayBird has built a quality water-resistant product and I would almost go as far to say
it's water proof.
Instead of spending millions on advertising, they just passed those savings onto their
customers.
And shockingly enough, even this pair is somehow still alive.
You can tell by the over-excited female voice (“Power on!”) announcing how much battery
percentage is left (“Battery 60%.”).
I do still need to buy another pair for myself though.
These are currently my favorite headphones.
I'll link all the different color variants in the video description right below this
video, along with the current pricing.
Let me know if you have any other headphones you want me to try out or tear apart.
And thanks a ton for watching.
I'll see you around.