Are Your Apple Earphones Real or Fake?

Buying headphones online is a minefield. There are so many counterfeits, copies and knock offs, especially for some of the most popular headphones on the market: Apple EarPods.

We want you to be sure you know what you’re getting, and have created this guide to help you spot the counterfeit Apple earphones that seems to have flooded marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon.

Tested headphones

So to summarise, the three sets of headphones we will be comparing are:

1. Generic copy headphones
2. The best counterfeit headphones on the market
3. Original Apple iPhone 5 headphones (out of the retail box)

Generic copy headphones

As soon as you get your hands on these you will have absolutely no doubt that these are not a genuine Apple product. There are some very clear signs these are fakes:

• The box won’t fit together correctly.
• There is no Apple logo on the rear of the box.
• Marks and excess plastic are visible from machining.

Protruding rough plastic – clear signs of manufacturing.

Missing Apple logo on the rear of the box.

Once inside the box, there are more clear signs that these are fakes:

• Join marks on the earbuds are very prominent and raised. These are visible on the originals, but feel smooth.
• The metal mesh is replaced by a cheap looking black cloth.
• The grill on the stem is missing all together.
• The cable feels glossy, not matt like the originals.
• The in-line remote is poorly put together and has dirt in the gaps.

These fake headphones are missing the grill on the headphone stem completely.

The gauze in the original headphones is metal. In these cheap copies they have used a black fabric covering, held in poorly with glue.

As above, the gauze on the side is also made from fabric, not metal.

The in-line remote is very poorly made.

Sound quality

These fake earphones sound terrible. One earbud is louder then the other, and it crackles and cuts out when the socket is moved. The sound itself is very quiet and tinny.

Anyone who loves music will hate these headphones!

Summary

It’s pretty clear these are not an original Apple product. Even if these are sold as a copy product, we would be disappointed paying £5 for such a lousy pair of headphones!

The best counterfeit headphones on the market

The counterfeit Apple EarPods are the ones that are more commonly being sold a genuine Apple product in the UK. They are very convincing, but we have a few ways you can tell that they are fake.

Visually, we were very impressed with these. The packaging is good quality, clean, and shows all the correct markings. Once opened, the cables look and feel identical to the original Apple headphones. Side by side with the genuine article, it is almost impossible to tell them apart.

We did notice a few signs that something wasn’t right, but these are much more subtle than above:

• The white part of the case which the headphones arrived in shows two dimple marks from machining. These are not present on the originals.
• The rubber part of the cable that splits the single cable into the left and right cables shows some signs of bad machining.
• The biggest giveaway was the microphone logo, which has a thinner outline on the copy than on the original.
• Apple switched the manufacturing process with these iPhone 5 earbuds from China to Vietnam. On your cable you should see “Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in Vietnam” but many of these fakes – including this pair – have “Assembled in China” instead.
• The text mentioned above is very faded on the fakes, and much clearer on the original headphones.

The splitter isn’t machined as well as on the originals, though this is very subtle.

The mic logo on the rear of the in-line remote on the fake headphones is darker and has a thinner outline. The printing is not very good quality. The original have a more dark grey colour with a thicker outline and excellent print quality.

We have only ever seen original iPhone 5 headphones being made in Vietnam. Our fake headphones have the same “Assembled in China” text found on the older Apple headphones. The text is also very faded on the fakes.

Sound quality

The sound quality is very poor – what you would expect from cheaper headphones (around the £5 - £10 mark)? The main letdown is the utter lack of bass and volume.

In our tests, the play and pause function of the in-line remote stopped working, the microphone quality is terrible (it sounds like your underwater), and the volume doesn’t do much as they are very quiet anyway.

Summary

All in all, these are very good copies and hard to tell apart form the original product. We are confident that most “genuine” headphones currently being sold via online marketplaces are these quality fakes. Many buyers may not even know they have been sold fakes.

Inside the headphones

Now that we have compared our two fakes with an original, let’s crack them open and see the real differences.

If you are still unsure if you have fakes or originals, the real difference is inside. We found the fakes very easy to pop open with a little pressure. The originals were much harder, and we had to cause a bit of damage to get inside these using the same method. See the comparisons below:

The biggest giveaway is the fakes having a knot in the cable to secure them in place. Apple simply wouldn’t do this; on the originals, you can see an extra bracket that secures the cable in place. The gauze is also held in place using a better method.
Cabling is also of a much higher quality (the fakes were not soldered very well at all).

The speakers are very different. The originals feel much better quality; they are less fragile and heavier. They also look visually different with the originals feeling rougher.

The earbud covers are slightly different, too. The originals have two slightly larger outlet holes. The grey material is also a matt finish on the original, but has a more glossy finish on the fakes.

Hopefully you can now tell the originals from the fakes.