Between us and the (heat-sensitive) battery is a moat of white, rubbery, alcohol-resistant adhesive. Left with no other options, we carefully begin manual excavation.

Picking around this little bomb is what you call EOP (Explosive Ordnance Paleontology). Well, okay, we might be the only ones who call it that.

The battery is tethered by a soldered cable—so even though you can get to it, it's still not easily replaceable at this point.

Hey wait, this looks familiar—could this be the same battery that we found in the Galaxy Buds?

They're both German-made, lithium-ion button cells running at 3.7 V—but the Galaxy Buds' (slightly larger) battery reads CP1254, while the one in the AirPods Pro is labeled CP1154.

Physically, the CP1154 has 14% less volume than the 200 mWh CP1254. With the power of math, we estimate that this battery packs ~168 mWh.

Teardown update: after some more hands-on time with this mystery cell, we've peeled up all the goopy stickers and found a tiny Wh rating! We weren't too far off with our guess—the battery is officially rated at 0.16 Wh.

This is a huge boost from the 93 mWh cylindrical batteries in the AirPods 2, and is closer to its pro kin, the PowerBeats Pro.