Collaborations

Our editorial content on iFixit.com—including teardowns, repairability scores, and blog posts—is not for sale. We love it when manufacturers ask us for repairability advice at the design stage, instead of waiting for us to call out their mistakes after something has gone to market. But we are clear with them and want to be clear with you: Manufacturers cannot buy a better repairability score. They don’t get points on our scoring guide for having worked with us. We will never promise to write glowing blog posts about their products, nor will we ever hold our tongues when we think they’re making missteps.

We think it is important for us to be as transparent as possible. We want you to be able to trust our repairability scores and our commitment to holding manufacturers accountable for unrepairable designs.

At iFixit, our goal is to fix the world, and we’ve got tons of tools in our toolbox. We work with advocacy groups to build better policy around the world. We work with manufacturers to help them distribute parts, build better products, and understand the importance of repair. We have a phenomenal community that is super passionate about repair. We couldn’t do what we do without each of these tools, but we also want to make sure that iFixit will always be an independent voice, regardless of our relationships.

So here’s a continually updating list of our business relationships and collaborations. It’s a partial list—we work with other folks who are making great strides on repairability, but who aren’t ready to announce anything yet. We’ll be linking to this page from relevant content across the site, to be sure of our transparency. We’ve got a lot of moving parts, so if we’ve missed anything, let us know. We’re happy to correct any mistakes we’ve made. You can’t change the world without trust, so we’re starting here!

iFixit has consulted with the following companies (and others we hope to share with you soon) to provide repairability assessments of their products before or after market. We believe it’s important for us to give actionable feedback to product designers to help them make more repairable stuff. Sometimes we provide this feedback in writing, and sometimes we host repairability workshops for designers.

These companies have no input on our public repairability scoring of their devices or any other editorial content on iFixit.com.

• HP
• Alphabet / Google
• Fairphone
• Microsoft
• North Face
• REI
• Logitech

When we assess product repairability, one major consideration is whether repair parts are available to consumers and independent repair shops. Some companies don’t have their own marketplaces for selling parts and have asked for iFixit’s support. We are happy to provide our ecommerce platform to make it easier for manufacturers to get official parts into the hands of DIY fixers.

We sell parts for products from the following companies. These companies have no input on any content on iFixit.com outside of marketing pages and their parts’ individual product pages.

• HTC (Vive)
• Fairphone
• Motorola
• Samsung
• Google
• Teenage Engineering
• Vaude
• Valve

• Microsoft: We manufacture tools to their specifications and distribute them to our network of independent repair shops, called our Pro network. Microsoft has no control over who is a member of our Pro network. Tool availability is an important part of repairability, and this partnership allows us to make tools available beyond Microsoft’s own repair centers. Our intention is always to make tools, parts, and guides available to as many people as possible, and we will continue to encourage Microsoft to expand their tool availability to all DIY fixers.
• Patagonia: We have performed consulting work with Patagonia, including the joint creation of repair guides to support their lifetime warranty repairs and Worn Wear campaign. These repair guides are hosted on iFixit.com, but outside of these guides and associated banner ads, Patagonia has no input on content on iFixit.com.
• The Home Depot: We provide online service information and schematics to Home Depot technicians. The Home Depot assists us by providing our community with technical repair information but has no input on our editorial content.
• Vaude: We helped Vaude create their first set of guides in our system and continue to host their repair information. Vaude has no input into iFixit’s editorial content.

Yes. We use the same priorities and methods for repairability scoring on all devices. We complete teardowns as soon as products launch to capture public interest in tech and help guide consumers to more repairable products. As more information becomes available—e.g. software fixes or parts issues—scores may be revised when necessary. We disclose those revisions on the teardown page.

No. Our scoring methodology is the same whether we are hired to assess a product or not. The manufacturer has no input on the analysis and no involvement in the scoring decision.

Yes! We pull every lever we can to reduce e-waste, and working directly with manufacturers (from creating repair guides for their products to consulting with them on designing more repairable products) is one way we have an impact. Here are some of the guardrails we keep in place to preserve our objectivity as we work with companies:

• We disclose these relationships on this page, on relevant product pages, and on content we are paid to produce.
• Our journalistic and engineering teams are separate from the teams handling business relationships, allowing us to remain objective.
• We sell parts to enable DIY repair and fight for the right to do those repairs. These missions place us on both sides of the table with manufacturers. Our success and reputation in both arenas depends on our objectivity.

• We perform paid consulting with industrial designers, serviceability engineers, and environmental teams.
• We conduct paid repair assessments of products for internal use by manufacturers. This service is honest, objective feedback on the repairability of their product, whether they like the end result or not. If they want to post it publicly themselves, they’re free to do so. We sometimes post these scores publicly with the annotation that the independent assessment was sponsored by the manufacturer. Our scoring methodology for repair assessments is the same as for our public teardowns.
• We create repair manuals as a service for brands and manufacturers for their internal use and/or publicly on iFixit.com. We believe that arming their service networks with quality guides is the gateway to public repair content.
• We resell parts from some manufacturers to make repair as accessible and easy as possible.
• We consult with governments as part of our advocacy work. We provide expertise for repair-related standards.

We purchase consumer devices at retail whenever possible. In rare cases, we may accept a device directly from the OEM if we can't get it through normal retail channels in time for an impactful teardown. Teardowns need to capture the wave of interest around tech launches in order to guide consumers to more repairable products. If our device is not purchased off the shelf, we prominently disclose how we obtained the device. The manufacturer has no input on the analysis and no involvement in the scoring decision.

As with all of iFixit, our content is supported by part and tool sales. We do not run ads on our site, and we do not sell teardown services. We do make money from product links and occasional affiliate revenue for products we do not sell. We will occasionally tear down hard-to-find devices that we have not purchased, and we will disclose as much on the teardown itself.