iFixit teardown: Chinese Rokid smart glasses are surprisingly easy to repair

Smart glasses do not have to become e-waste once their battery wears out. iFixit specialists tore down two Chinese models and found one of them surprisingly repairable, challenging the common claim that such devices cannot be serviced due to their compact size and waterproofing.

Both models examined, the Rokid and the Quark, feature a removable external battery pack in addition to an internal cell. Their internal hardware is nearly identical: a Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chipset, 32 GB of eMMC storage, and micro-LED projectors. The assembly approach, however, differs drastically.

The Quark, like the Ray-Ban and Meta glasses, requires aggressive heating and prying to open — a destructive process that leaves marks. The Rokid, by contrast, comes apart easily: the manufacturer used minimal adhesive, and the internal layout, including the battery, is designed with serviceability in mind. The same logic extends to the external power module.

In the video, iFixit spends considerable time criticizing glued-in batteries and the recent European Union decision to exempt many wearables from new right-to-repair rules covering replaceable cells. Given the Rokid teardown, along with previous Pixel Watch 4 and Fairbuds disassemblies, the authors argue that user-replaceable batteries should be mandated for this category of gadgets as well.