How to Spot Fake AirPods

Identifying Fakes from Their Product Page

Check for the Apple name and logo on the product page. Most fakes will lack an explicit reference to Apple, missing both the signature logo and the name “Apple” and the “Apple, Inc.” brand name. IF you see another name besides “Airpods” or “Apple,” you are on a knock-off product page. Another tell-tale sign on product pages is overly-long descriptive names, like “Wireless Bluetooth Headphones-Wireless in-Ear Headphones-Running Headphones for Women Men-Sport Bluetooth Earphones-Best Sport Wireless Earbuds-Outdoor Portable Bluetooth Earphones1.”

Look for poorly written or mismatched product reviews. Check for the presence of reviews that have confusing grammar or seem like copy-and-pasted “word salad.” Some fake airpod manufacturers simply copy reviews for other products word-for-word, which is a good sign that the earbuds are not Airpods. This is only a good metric if enough reviews seem fishy. Many products end up with a handful of spam reviews.

Search the product name online. Enter the title of the product page on a search engine like Google and see what shows up. If there are no other references to the product, or if there are pages listing the product as a fake, the earbuds are knock-offs. Some knock-offs have a real brand associated with them. If they have a website, check and see if they provide contact info. Not having a way to reach them is a good sign they run a scam.

Wait a week or two and see if the product page is still up. Sites like Amazon try to catch fake product pages, but there is often a delay. As a result, manufacturers will leave a page up for a few weeks before taking it down and creating a new one. If you bookmark a page and get a “404 Not Found” error in a week, the page was certainly not an official Apple one.

Examining Potential Fakes

Feel the earbuds to see if the plastic is hard or soft. Fake Airpods may not be made of plastic that is as hard as genuine ones. If the plastic feels pliable or cheap, the earbuds are almost certainly fake. You should not be able to bend any part of an Airpod, and the plastic should be smooth but not soft. Some fake Airpods have a soft plastic cover over the speaker for comfort. This piece is not included with Apple Airpods.

See if there are any physical buttons, which Airpods lack. If you see a “multifunction” button or a button that needs to be pressed in order to turn the earbuds on, they are fake. Real Airpods don’t have any external buttons, as they have an optical sensor to tell if they are being worn. Not all fakes will have a button, but any that do are definite fakes.

Look for an oval shaped microphone on the bottom. Turn the Airpod over and look at the microphone. If the microphone is shaped like an oval, the product is probably real. Most fakes have a distinctly round-shaped microphone. Both the metal casing and the microphone itself should be ovals. This will be a very slight difference. It may help to compare them to a pair of known genuine Airpods.

Watch for LED lights on the earbuds that change colors. If you notice that there are flashing or slowly changing lights on the earbuds, they are not real Airpods, as genuine Airpods lack any sort of indicator light. The lights will often change colors as you wear them, typically from red to blue. This may be hard to detect during the day. LED lights are an easy way to tell if someone else’s Airpods are fake, especially at night.

Check for a micro-USB port on the case instead of a “Lightning” one. While some fakes are realistic enough to have a fake Lightning charging port, most will have a trapezoid-shaped micro-USB port for charging. It will be roughly the same size as a Lightning port, but it won’t be round in shape. If a fake does have a Lightning port, the outline of the port will be significantly thicker than an Apple one.

Weigh the case and earbuds together to see it is 46 grams (1.6 oz). One of the most effective ways to distinguish even the most realistic fakes from genuine Airpods is to weigh the charging case with the earbuds inside on a kitchen scale. The case should be almost exactly 46 grams (1.6 oz) in weight, with fakes almost always weighing significantly less. A regular scale won’t be sensitive enough to detect this difference, so use a kitchen scale if you have one or ask to borrow a friend’s.

Testing the Earbuds for Airpod Features

See if the earbuds will “quick connect” to an iPhone. When you open up the case of a pair of genuine Apple Airpods, an iOS device like an iPhone will pop up with a prompt to connect to the earbuds. A fake pair of Airpods will not quick connect, and you will have to connect manually via the Bluetooth settings menu. If your earbuds don’t quick connect, there may be a connectivity or system permission reason for this. Troubleshoot the issue using the manual or an online resource before deciding your Airpods are fake.

Test whether the earbuds hold their charge for 1.5 hours or less. Fake Airpods will probably not hold their charge as effectively as real Airpods. While the brand-name variety can last almost 3 hours between charges, off-brand earbuds will lose their charge in almost half the time, going down to 0 in around 1.5 hours right out of the box. Let the earbuds play music until they lose power. Set a stopwatch to see how long it takes for them to power down or reach a critical level.

Listen for low quality or absent bass while playing music. Play a song that you know has audible bass and see how it sounds compared to another pair of earbuds that you know are quality. One of the most noticeable differences between the sound quality in Airpods and knock-offs is the lack of quality bass in fakes. In some cases the fakes may have virtually no bass. Lots of hip hop and R&B songs have heavy bass, which will be helpful for this experiment.

Enter the serial number on the Apple site. If all else fails and you can’t tell whether the Airpods are fakes, you can try to access the warranty feature that all genuine Airpods come with. Type this number into the box on https://checkcoverage.apple.com/ to see if the number checks out. The serial number can be found on the inside of the case, right in the little cubby where the earbuds sit. Unfortunately, some manufacturers steal genuine serial numbers. This means that the number would show up as real on the Apple site.