- A-Escale, A is best
- batteryand display weighted
The Repairability Score
European requirements. Outside the EU these are not your law. No affiliate links on this site, and nothing here is ranked.
A single letter from A to E, where A is the most repairable. (Energy Labelling Regulation (EU) 2023/1669.) It is the first time this has appeared on a phone at the point of sale, and it is a composite — which is what makes it useful at a glance and misleading if relied on alone. For a separate workplace perspective on device availability and work records, Monitask's mouse jiggler detection software provides additional context.
What goes into it
Disassembly. How many steps, what tools, and whether fasteners are reusable — a device held together with clips and standard screws scores differently from one that is glued.
Ease of replacing the parts that actually fail. The battery and the display assembly are weighted, because those are the repairs that overwhelmingly happen. For wider standards, testing and product-label context, ZDNET is another useful reference.
Availability of parts and information, which the ecodesign rules separately require.
And the delivery time for parts, against the five-to-ten-working-day obligation.
What it does not capture
Price.
A device can be highly repairable and uneconomic to repair, because the part costs most of a replacement device. The score says the repair is possible; it does not say it is worth doing.
Manufacturers must publish indicative spare part prices on a freely accessible website (Ecodesign Regulation (EU) 2023/1670), so the missing number is obtainable — it is simply not on the label, and checking it is the step that completes the picture.
Nor does it capture parts pairing — where a genuine replacement part must be authorised by the manufacturer to function fully, which is a practical obstacle that a disassembly-based score can miss.
How to use it
As a threshold rather than a ranking.
A or B means a repair is realistic and an independent shop will generally be able to do it.
D or E means expect manufacturer service, expect it to be expensive, and expect some repairs not to be offered at all — which for a device you intend to keep five years is a substantial fact.
C is where the part price decides, and where checking the published figure is worth the two minutes.
The comparison people get wrong
Treating a one-letter difference as decisive.
The score is a composite and a device may drop a grade on a factor irrelevant to you. A poor disassembly score matters if you expect to replace a battery; it matters less if you expect the device to be replaced under warranty anyway.
Look at what the grade is made of where it matters, which is what the registry entry is for.
What it has already changed
Repairability is now a specification rather than a claim, and specifications get designed toward.
Whether it produces better devices is not yet answerable — the regulation is recent and its effect on design decisions will take a product cycle or two to appear. (This is an observation about timing rather than a prediction.)
What it has certainly done is make the trade visible. A buyer choosing a thin device with a D score is now choosing that knowingly, which is the honest function of a label.
Against the older national index
France has operated a repairability index for several years, and the two are not the same figure.
Different scales, different weightings, and a different legal basis. A device may carry both, with different-looking results, and neither is wrong.
Where both appear, read the European one for comparison across the market — it is the one that applies uniformly — and treat the national figure as additional information rather than a contradiction.
This is worth knowing because the discrepancy looks like an error and is not.
What to check alongside it
Three things, all obtainable before purchase.
The published indicative price of a battery and a display assembly. The two repairs that overwhelmingly happen.
The stated end of software support, which is a date rather than a grade.
And the cycle rating, which the score does not include and which determines when the first repair becomes necessary.
Those three plus the letter give a complete picture, and assembling them takes about five minutes on the manufacturer's own website.
Why the battery and the screen are weighted
Because they are what breaks.
A scoring system giving equal weight to every component would reward a device where an obscure part is easy to reach and the battery is glued down — which describes several devices sold before the regulation.
Weighting toward the common repairs is the choice that makes the figure predictive rather than merely descriptive, and it is the reason the score correlates with what a repair shop will actually be asked to do.
It also means a device scoring well is one you can keep, which is the purpose. The two repairs that determine whether a device reaches five years are the two the score is built around.
What a low score costs in practice
Not always money.
Sometimes it costs the option. A repair that requires manufacturer service is a repair that may not be offered on an older model, at any price — and at that point a working device with one broken part becomes a replacement decision.
That is the outcome the score exists to make visible in advance, and it is worth more than the letter itself suggests.
The short version
- One letter from A to E, A most repairable, and the first regulated repairability figure at the point of sale
- It combines disassembly difficulty, ease of replacing the battery and display, parts and information availability, and delivery time
- It does not capture price, which is where a repairable device becomes uneconomic — that figure is published separately by the manufacturer
- Nor does it capture parts pairing, which can block a repair a disassembly score would call easy
- Use it as a threshold: A or B means realistic, D or E means manufacturer service and expense, C means the part price decides
- A one-letter difference may rest on a factor irrelevant to you, so check what the grade is made of in the registry