Endurism Spotlight: Etymotic ER2SE

A set of AirPods Pro 2 costs €217. The lithium battery inside them is a timer.

The money

Wireless earbuds die from the inside. The battery holds less charge every year. After about three years the runtime collapses. Apple charges €67,10 to service one earbud. Restoring both buds and the case costs close to a new pair. So most people buy the new pair instead.

That is the replacement tax. You pay it roughly every three years.

The Etymotic ER2SE costs €155,95. It has no battery. The cable is a plain wire. It unclips when it frays. A new one costs a few euros. The wax filters twist out. The tips pull off. Nothing inside it is on a timer.

Run both across ten years.

The wireless pair adds up to roughly €870 over the decade. You buy it about four times. The Etymotic sits under €200 with cables and tips included. Per year that is about €87 against €20. You spend four times as much to own the earbuds that expire.

The object

Etymotic has built insert earphones for decades. The ER2SE uses a single balanced-armature driver in an aluminium housing. The deep triple-flange tip seals the ear canal and blocks outside noise by physics. No processing chip dates it. No firmware gets abandoned. It plugs into a 3.5mm jack and plays.

The parts that wear are the parts you can replace. Filters, tips, cable. The driver keeps working underneath them.

Ownership

The trade is real. The ER2SE is wired. It has no active noise cancelling. It also has nothing inside that expires.

A wireless earbud with a dead battery is worth nothing on Marktplaats. It cannot be opened. It cannot be resold. The ER2SE keeps a steady used value because a ten-year-old pair still performs like a new one. Your money stays in the object rather than leaking out every three years.

The ER2SE is the last pair of earphones you buy this decade.