The big shift: sealed wearables win over DIY batteries
The wearable battery exemption is a rule that allows compact, water-resistant devices like smartwatches, fitness trackers, smart glasses, and wireless earbuds to avoid user replaceable battery designs when DIY access would threaten safety, durability, or reliable performance across their intended lifetime.
Here is the blunt reality for anyone dreaming of snapping open a smartwatch like an old phone: the European Union has decided your watch, ring, or earbuds can remain sealed. Under the broader EU battery replacement rules, portable devices are supposed to be built so consumers can remove and replace batteries throughout a product’s life. And new legislation prepared in 2022 is set to bring back user-replaceable batteries across many electronics from February 2027. But a recent delegated regulation carves out a clear exception for wearables, recognizing that water-resistant, tiny devices are a different engineering beast altogether. In practice, that means your smartwatch is more likely to go to a service bench than your kitchen table when its battery fades.
Why wearables got a pass: physics, not fantasy
The exemption exists because, for many wearables, forcing user replaceable battery designs would either make them bulkier and less durable or introduce meaningful safety risks. The Commission singled out smartwatches, fitness trackers, wireless earbuds, and smart glasses as products where user battery replacement could compromise safety, durability, or water resistance. These devices live on your wrist, in your ears, or on your face; they are designed to be splashed, submerged, washed, or worn during workouts, putting them squarely in the category of so-called wet appliances that are likely to see water exposure.
The engineering problem is simple and stubborn. Open a compact, water-resistant enclosure and fail to reseal it perfectly, and you introduce a genuine safety risk, especially around moisture and sweat. Shrink everything down further and another risk appears: in designs where internals are tightly packed, there is a real danger of users damaging the lithium battery while trying to remove it. In other words, the smallest, most waterproof gadgets are precisely the ones where do-it-yourself battery surgery is most likely to end in a dead device or, worse, a fire.
What this means for smartwatch repairability and service
If you own a sealed smartwatch, fitness band, or pair of wireless earbuds, this decision effectively locks in professional servicing as the norm. Under the exemption, batteries in qualifying wearables only need to be removable and replaceable by independent professionals, not by consumers. Manufacturers are still required to make sure these pros can access and replace the battery without destroying the device, and any specialized tools they need must be sold at a reasonable and non-discriminatory price.
On paper, that sounds like a fair compromise: users lose DIY access, but gain an expectation that an independent service shop can extend the life of their device. In practice, though, smartwatch repairability remains constrained by design choices. You cannot pop off a back cover with a basic screwdriver and pry tool the way EU battery replacement rules envision for other user replaceable battery products. Instead, your watch remains a glued, sealed stack of components that only a trained hand is supposed to open. The EU is not demanding a redesign that makes those stacks friendlier to the average hobbyist; it is drawing the line at professional repairability, not true tinker-friendly hardware.
The broader battery rules: wearables as a special case
To see why this exemption matters, you have to place it in the context of the wider EU battery replacement rules. The general principle is consumer empowerment: products with portable batteries should be built so users can remove and replace them throughout the product’s lifetime. New rules prepared in 2022 will bring back user-replaceable batteries on many electronic devices starting in February 2027, and even some companies are already releasing hardware with replaceable batteries to get ahead of the change. For smartphones and tablets, from February 18, 2027, batteries will need to be swappable without special tools, with replacement parts available for at least five years.
The wearable battery exemption breaks that pattern. It explicitly adds exemptions for products where user battery replacement would compromise safety, durability, or water resistance. It also opens the door for wearables that are so small that miniaturisation alone makes safe DIY battery removal unrealistic. Quote-worthy or not, the message is clear: while phones and game consoles are being dragged toward tool-based user replaceable battery designs, sealed smartwatches and earbuds are being allowed to stay sealed, as long as someone on the professional side of the counter can still service them.
Does this undermine right to repair wearables—or accept reality?
This is where the debate turns philosophical. Right-to-repair advocates see DIY battery access as a cornerstone of consumer protection: if you cannot replace the battery yourself, your device’s lifespan is effectively at the mercy of service networks and corporate pricing. They worry that every exemption carves a larger loophole, inviting manufacturers to claim safety or water resistance whenever convenient. The timing of this move has already drawn scrutiny, since it followed months of pushback from U.S. officials over rules that had reportedly complicated plans for display-equipped smart glasses in Europe.
Regulators push back on that criticism, insisting the decision reflects physics more than lobbying. A Commission spokesperson has said the EU “has not given in to anyone’s pressure” and that the exemption followed broad public consultation and “is not about regulating one specific product”. In my view, the truth sits awkwardly in the middle. The exemption accepts real engineering limits of compact, waterproof wearables, but it also codifies a second-class standard for smartwatch repairability. Your next watch will probably last longer thanks to professional battery replacement, but it still will not be a device you truly own with a user replaceable battery.
