A CT scan of real and counterfeit Apple AirPods Pro shows how inferior the fakes are
There are many counterfeit products of Apple's wireless earphones, AirPods Pro, and there is no end to the number of people who are fooled into buying them when they are sold cheaply on the internet. John Bruner, an engineer at Lumafield, which develops the industrial CT scanner ``Neptune,'' explains that you can immediately tell whether the AirPods Pro is genuine or counterfeit by checking the inside with an X-ray CT scan.
Looking inside real vs. fake AirPods with industrial CT
Fake Apple AirPods Exposed! - YouTube
Below are the CT scan results of two types of AirPods Pro: genuine (Authentic) and counterfeit (Counterfeit).
The world is full of counterfeit Apple products. We CT scanned two fake AirPods and compared them to the real thing… ???? pic.twitter.com/VFWvAwUrox
— Jon Bruner (@JonBruner) November 7, 2023
According to Mr. Bruner, there is almost no difference in appearance between the genuine product and the counterfeit product, but when looking at the contents, there are three main differences: ``battery'', ``circuit'', and ``assembly quality''.
In true AirPods Pro, the cylindrical button battery is housed in the head of the earbud and is designed to fit snugly into a compact form factor and efficiently deliver optimal power.
Surrounding the button battery are a delicate circuit board, speaker drivers, and various sensors. Additionally, one microphone is installed on the outside of the head part and one inside the earphone piece.
There is also a built-in microphone at the bottom of the stem. The first generation AirPods Pro had a built-in battery in the stem, but in the second generation AirPods Pro, the battery has been moved to the head, so the stem has input buttons, a touch sensor for volume adjustment, and wireless connectivity. It has a built-in antenna.
Next, the results of scanning the counterfeit AirPods Pro look like this. The board and wiring seem to be similar to the first generation AirPods Pro, but you can clearly see that the internal design and detail of the parts are completely different from the real thing.
The vaguely blue block visible on the head is the built-in battery, and it's not a button battery like the real thing, but a pouch-shaped lithium-ion battery. Also, there is no built-in sensor in the head part, so it is clearly sparser than the real thing.
The quality of the microphone used is also several steps lower than the real one, so you can't expect the noise canceling function at all.
However, the disguise to connect with the iPhone seems to be very well done, and when you open the case near the iPhone, it will be recognized as genuine, and the firmware version will also be correct even though it is not actually installed. It seems that it will be displayed.
Below is a CT scan of the genuine 2nd generation AirPods Pro case. The 2nd generation AirPods Pro supports MagSafe chargers, so you can see that they have a built-in magnet.
The 2nd generation AirPods Pro case has a built-in speaker, and you can now use the function to make a sound to notify your location. On the right side is a metal strap hole, which is connected to the charging port and seems to play the role of grounding.
A CT scan of a counterfeit AirPods Pro case looks like this. The genuine case has a metal leaf spring built into the lid, but the counterfeit case uses a regular coil spring.
There is a built-in speaker, but it is very primitive and is only used to make sound when you open the lid, just like the real thing. The design of the built-in board is also old.
There is also a built-in charging coil, but there are no MagSafe magnets around it. However, a CT scan revealed that there was a mysterious block in front of the pouch-shaped lithium-ion battery. Mr. Bruner believes that this block is either a magnet inserted to reproduce the fixation of MagSafe charging, or a weight to create a realistic feeling of weight. In addition, it seems that the MagSafe charger did not stick to the counterfeit case.
There is also another type of counterfeit AirPods Pro available, but a CT scan showed that the contents were so empty that you could tell at a glance that it was a fake. This counterfeit product doesn't even have wireless charging functionality.
As for the earphone itself, the contents are based on the first generation, and you can see that the quality of the parts is lower than the other fake product.
The appearance of the counterfeit product was like this, and if you didn't even look at the contents, it looked just like the real thing.
A forum related to this article has been set up on the GIGAZINE official Discord server. Anyone can write freely, so please feel free to comment!
• Discord | 'Have you ever used non-Apple earphones that look like AirPods? How did they feel?' | GIGAZINE
https://discord.com/channels/1037961069903216680/1171736632840429588
Related Posts:
