Every year we marvel at the latest product releases from tech companies, with Apple often leading the way. What is often not said however is that that shiny new device with even more battery life than the previous model will quite likely be a shadow of its former self in little over 2 – 3 years. This is not a conspiracy, and there is nothing evil going on. Batteries, like brake pads on car, are consumable devices that we should expect to have to replace.
Unlike brakes on a car, the cost of replacing a battery can be quite the expense relative to the original price of the device. In many cases, the price of the original (or equivalent) device may have gone down by the time the battery needs replacing further reducing the gap. Why is this bad? The closer the gap between replacing a battery and the cost of a new device makes it more likely for someone to say, “My battery sucks, I’ll just buy a new one”. This is great if you’re in the market for selling new devices, but it’s not so great for the environment.
The chart above shows the price of a new device compared to the cost of replacing the battery, as quoted by Apple on their UK web site on the 15th of September 2022. Where there are upgrade options available (such as storage or RAM), I took the price of the base model. For AirPods, Apple quotes a price per AirPod. I was generous and only multiplied this by 2, my intuition being that customers are less likely to replace the battery in their AirPods case but will need to replace the batteries in the buds themselves.
As you can see, the percentage ranges from 10% for a MacBook Air M2 to a whopping 61% for the AirPods 3rd generation. For some reason it’s cheaper to replace the battery in a set of AirPods Pro than it is with the cheaper AirPods. One might argue that this is simply the price we pay for having cheaper products in the first place. Obviously, the relative cost of a battery for a £2,000 maxed out MacBook Pro will be a lot less than for a £259 Apple Watch. The problem is that the higher the cost of a replacement battery relative to simply replacing the product, the more likely consumers opt for the latter. Don’t get me wrong, there are many other reasons consumers upgrade their devices, but poor battery life surely contributes greatly to that feeling that the device is old and needs replacing.
Perhaps Apple could do more to nudge consumers into making fewer unnecessary purchases by reducing the cost of replacement batteries?
Chart Data
| Device | Device Cost | Battery Cost | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 14 Pro | £1,099 | £105 | 10% |
| iPhone 14 | £849 | £105 | 12% |
| iPhone SE 2 | £449 | £49 | 11% |
| IPad Pro 11” | £749 | £99 | 13% |
| IPad Air | £569 | £99 | 17% |
| iPad | £319 | £99 | 31% |
| Apple Watch Ultra | £849 | £105 | 12% |
| Apple Watch 8 | £419 | £85 | 20% |
| Apple Watch SE | £259 | £85 | 33% |
| AirPods Pro* | £249 | £90 | 36% |
| AirPods* | £179 | £110 | 61% |
| MacBook Air M2 | £1,249 | £129 | 10% |
| MacBook Air M1 | £999 | £129 | 13% |
| MacBook Pro 14 | £1,899 | £199 | 10% |
iMarc 
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