Mildly Infuriating

Built to Fail: The story of 21st century consumer technology.

I'm a little biased as I work for Bose but we still use a metal yoke and hinge.

This is the second time these broke on my WH1000-XM5's. At least they're easily replacable by just removing a few screws and dropping in a new one.

Compared to that, this bad boy is over 30 years old and never broke once - thanks to a headband which is made out of metal. Despite that, it's even more comfortable than Sony's modern one:

Sony parts prices are insane. The urethane pleather on my headband started cracking on my xm4's. A replacement headband was half the price of a new unit. So I ended up getting a silicone cover that will hopefully keep the pieces from flaking off into my hair. I also needed new earpads. Oem pads were around $40 for EACH side. The pleather just has a certain degradation time and once it hits, it all falls apart at the same time. Replacing all the pleather parts on my unit would have cost just as much as a new headset.

I hate having something designed to be somewhat repairable but practically speaking it isn't due to pricing.

Planned obsolescence

But if they sold you a pair that lasted for decades, you wouldn't need to buy any more.

I've moved onto earbuds. Earfun Air for a staggering £22. The sound genuinely isn't bad either, I've no idea how you can even make them for that. Slavery, probably. Still, £22 is £22.

My brother got me an audio technica ATH-M30 in 2011. This before they even had the 30x. I've easily put 12k hours in em, just needed to change the ear cups. I drop them all them time from desk height too.

Every few years I've thought about upgrading for better quality but they get the job done well enough that I never pull the trigger. It's a consumers dream

Similar vibe… whatever that shitty material that they put on the top padded band and foam ear coverings that starts to crack and flake off on my bald head making me look like I have a skin disorder. I’ve had headphones ranging in price from $30 to $300 and they all do it.

At least they were probably expensive.

If this comment saves only one person from wasting their money, it is worth it:

Do not buy Focal Bathys.

The build quality is super cheap, mine broke not even two years after purchase. The plastic surrounding the metal bits that connect the central part to the ear pads will break sooner or later.

My XM4s are still holding up after 3 years and are definitely beefier than this.

So frustrating when an otherwise good product has an Achilles' heel. Is this bad design an oversight to save cost or intentional to limit its service life?

/don't know if this particular product is "otherwise good", speaking more generally

Yeah, this is a huge problem. I found the best solution is to buy a 3.5mm audio cable with a microphone (these can be had for 10-20$) and attach them to a nice set of metal band headphones (closed or open depending on if you want sound isolation). I gave up on gaming, Sony headphones and the like a long time ago they are all trash no matter how much you pay for them, they break and become e-waste in the first year.

I have templates for metal parts you can cut and bend with hand tools and a cheap dremel. I can send it to you if you want.

Steel stick. Set with krazy glue first, so it's aligned then get the steel stick and mix up a marble-sized ball and mold it around the break. Leave to harden for 24 hours. Shit's amazing.

That just looks like a terrible design. The background joint looks as if all the pressure of the ear cup is pressing outward on that exact spot where the foreground joint broke since it's at that weird angle with no other support.

Ok I don't want to start a fight..

But if someone wants to buy a new pair of headphones with mic for that one gaming night of the week. And dont care about the rgb and other gimmicks. What should they buy?

Ofc asking for a friend here.

Sony are the worst with form over function bullshit on headphones.

I brought these on sale recently. Learned about the shitty hinge quality afterwords.. For what its worth, I found this repair kit from centralsound.co, and its a solid reinforcement option. It works even on a fully broken hinge like yours. Sucks to pay an additional $40 for "premium" headphones to ensure they last beyond the warranty, but here we are..

Same happened on my hph-mt5 yamahas, i took a piece of wire and my soldering iron and basically melted rebar into it, and that fix is still going 3 years on

Just had the same problem with my LucidSound LS45 ... the headband is metal, I saw the recommendation to get them in one of those "buy it for life" threads so I did ....

Turns out that the end caps of the headband are plastic and prone to breaking ... I was able to save them by buying a non working "parts only" set on eBay and replacing the parts

This thing has been with me for 8 years and counting ... they've been along for 3 motherboards, 2 cars and 6 girlfriends LOL

I have a set of Soundcore Q20i that I use anything rough (travel and such) and they’ve held up like champs.