What to do with old and dying AirPods: Recycling, replacing, and selling

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac, with a good read if you’ve got AirPods that work well, but suffer from aging batteries.

What I found most interesting:

PodSwap is a relatively new service, and it looks like a great option to get your AirPods batteries replaced at a nice discount. You can swap in your gen 1 or gen 2 AirPods with dead batteries for a refurbished and sanitized pair with “restored battery life.”

The company has indeed found a way to replace AirPods’ batteries with “specially developed equipment.” You’re not getting an official Apple battery here, but PodSwap says it’s done independent testing to make sure “The batteries we use are similar in performance to your original ones from Apple.”

The caveat:

PodSwap gives your AirPods new life for just $59.99 (the same would run $99 from Apple). The trade-off here is this service is mostly compelling for AirPods gen 1 owners since if you send in AirPods gen 2, you’re getting back gen 1 earphones.

Worth bookmarking PodSwap, especially if you’ve got gen 1 AirPods. And hopefully, they’ll work out fixes for gen 2 AirPods and AirPods Pro as well.