How to Spot Fake Sony WF-1000XM5 Earbuds

The top of the earbud PCB has the pogo pin button, the wireless antenna near the bottom, the voice mic, electret, a crystal oscillator, and 2 LEDs, blue and red.

Removing the PCB from the case, we can see the internal battery and the charging pin PCB. The top black wires go to the small driver. The driver is about 8mm. Again no glue or tape is used to keep the PCB in place.

This is the reverse side of the PCB with the Bluetooth chip and connections to the driver (1), charging pins (2), and the battery (3). The BT chip is a JL Bluetooth IC, but I cannot read the print on the chip. But it might be this one. Thanks LG. Here is the link to the IC datasheet.

After removing the driver, this is what is left of the lower half of the earbud, a magnet.

Here is the entire internals taken out and spread out. The driver has some rust on it, which probably might also be why it sounds like garbage. It is attached to the housing with tape.

Could there be other fakes that are different? Perhaps. An improved Sony WH-1000XM5 fake did appear online recently, so it is possible better and improved WF-1000XM5 fakes could also appear. I wanted to order the improved WH-1000XM5 fake, but it disappeared from Aliexpress.

There is also a fake WH-1000XM6 on Aliexpress. I did order it twice, but the order was cancelled both times. So I will wait a bit before re-ordering.

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