Microsoft's $200 Surface Earbuds are killing themselves — make sure you charge yours regularly to keep them going

If you're still using a pair of Surface Earbuds in 2025, five long years after they first debuted, you might want to make sure they're fully charged all of the time. I own three pairs of Surface Earbuds, all of which haven't been used in over a year, and none of them work anymore.

In their deep sleep, all three sets have forgotten how to be headphones. Two of them will no longer take a charge, meaning the earbuds won't receive power and the case can't handle pairing and syncing the earbuds to a device. One of my sets does still take a charge, but for whatever reason the left earbud no longer works.

Taking a quick look online, it seems I'm not the only one facing these issues. There are countless reports from people online complaining about their Surface Earbuds no longer showing signs of life, or showing a red blinking LED light which appears to translate to an error with charging.

If you've been daily driving your Surface Earbuds and exercising their batteries, yours will likely still work fine. But if you've had yours sat in a drawer for a handful of months or years, there's a high chance your earbuds will never wake from their sleep again. If you haven't used yours in a while, go and power them up to see if yours are okay.

I haven't used my Surface Earbuds in over a year because I moved on to better earbuds, but I recently had my Galaxy Buds Pro 3 stolen and needed a set of headphones in the interim. I thought the two pairs of $200 earbuds I bought a handful of years ago would suffice, but apparently not.

To complete my investigation, I went out and bought a brand-new, third set of Surface Earbuds on eBay for $70 to see if these devices really were killing themselves in their deep sleep. I unwrapped the product and plugged it in, and unfortunately the case also failed to take a charge, which confirms that if you leave these depleted for a long period of time, they'll eventually never wake up.

It's a shame, as even though the Surface Earbuds were never popular, they did at least look interesting. I was excited to go back to using my Surface Earbuds in the wake of my Galaxy Buds being stolen, but unfortunately that doesn't look like it can happen now.

Now, if you're thinking it's normal for battery powered technology to stop working after being discharged for a long period of time. I have a first-gen pair of Apple AirPods that haven't been used in years, and they still take a charge and hold power just fine. Battery life is incredibly poor, but they still wake up and function.

Looking back on my coverage of the Surface Earbuds, the fact that they eventually stop charging if you leave them depleted for long enough was already a documented issue. As far back as 2022, people were receiving new Surface Earbuds and finding that they wouldn't charge when unboxed.

I've also seen several reports online where the left earbuds fails to take a charge or no longer connects to any devices regardless of charge state. That appears to be what's happening with one of my sets. The case powers on, and I'm even able to connect it to a device, but only the right earbud takes any audio signal, with the left one essentially acting dead.

Unsurprisingly, the Surface Earbuds haven't been supported by Microsoft for many years. In fact, the company only ever shipped two firmware updates for the buds, both of which dropped in the same year the device first went on sale in 2020. Since then, Microsoft gave them no love and were essentially abandoned by 2022.

The good news is the Surface Headphones appear to not suffer from this death sleep issue. I have multiple sets of the over-ear Surface Headphones that haven't been charged in over a year, and those still take power and function fine. It just appears to be the Surface Earbuds that won't take a charge after being depleted for a long period of time.

So, a PSA to the few of you left still daily driving Surface Earbuds or using them every so often. If you want to keep using them, make sure they never deplete to zero for too long. If they do, they may never wake up. And if you were looking to buy a new pair: don't.