Fairphone, the Dutch maker of a series of extremely sustainable smartphones, has announced its entry to the portable audio market with the Fairbuds XL headphones.
Despite the deceptive name, the Fairbuds XL is actually a set of over-ear wireless headphones. The key feature here is its modular design and sustainable nature.
It’s been built using recycled and fair materials, including Fairtrade gold, vegan leather, 100% recycled plastic, 100% recycled aluminium, and even 100% recycled polyester and nylon for the bundled travel pouch. In addition, Fairphone says that it will pay 0.55 USD per headphone to fill the living wage gap of the production line workers.
As well as these recycled materials, the Fairbuds XL has been built using interchangeable spare parts, which are purchasable from the Fairphone website. This promises to increase the lifespan of the device and ultimately minimise its carbon footprint.
The Fairbuds XL offers a competitive feature set when it comes to the business of pumping music into your ears too, with 40mm dynamic drivers and ANC. Meanwhile, Fairphone reckons you’ll get 30 hours of battery life out of a full charge of the replaceable battery.
There’s also two-point bluetooth connectivity, so you can switch seamlessly between two sources. Despite that modular design, the Fairbuds XL comes with IP54 certification, which means it’s weather resistant.
There’s an accompanying Fairbuds app on both the Play Store and App Store which allows users to tweak the EQ presets (tuned by Sonarworks), as well as providing access to support such as quick start guides, tutorials and customer service.
The Fairbuds XL is available to buy from today for £219/€249, and it can be specified in either Green or Black, both of which come with a pleasing speckled pattern.
