As I said in the review, the only downside is that it has a non-replaceable battery. I'm not sure I want to buy one for £20 and then throw it away after 12 months of use.

A few of you asked how tightly sealed the unit is - so I'm going to take one apart and show you its guts!

Warning!

Opening your Chipolo will almost certainly void your warranty, it will degrade its waterproof rating, and you risk breaking it entirely. Proceed with caution!

Opening it Up

There's a thin seam running around the outside of the Chipolo Plus.

A thin screwdriver can get between the cracks.

You'll need to go all the way around the casing in order to get it open. You will almost certainly crack and break the casing.

Battery

Once the top is off, we can see the battery

It's a fairly standard CR2032 - although it is tightly wedged in there. The original Chipolo uses the similar CR2025.

Parts

The plastic casing comes apart very easily from the electronics. We can see the three clips which need to be cracked in order to open the piece.

On the underside is a small foil disc which acts as the speaker, there's a button in the middle for interacting with the unit.

Chips

What's powering this unit?

The main SoC is the Nordic nRF51822. The smaller chip is the PAM8904 which controls the speaker.

Thoughts

The original Chipolo is a little fragile - but I'm not convinced that making the Plus unit sealed is a good idea. It feels wasteful to have a completely disposable unit.

It is possible to replace the battery, but you have to destroy most of the outer casing in order to do so. A slip of sticky-tape should be enough to seal it back up again - at the cost of aesthetics!

Manufacturers have to become more environmentally responsible when designing these gadgets.

Buy

You can buy a Chipolo using my referral link http://ssqt.co/NEvh for £20 - or £62 for a pack of 4.