Comment by harkinian
2 years ago
I have high-end Bose headphones from 2020, a new iPhone, and a new Mac. Bluetooth sucks. You're far better off with AirPods than anything else if you're going to use BT.
By the way, it's so bad that I don't use headphones anymore with the iPhone. I use the phone in speaker mode. And the only reason I even have a new iPhone is because AT&T dropped support for my old one.
I have multiple pairs of high end Sony headphones, Pixel buds, numerous Bluetooth speakers, and Bluetooth works reliably when I pair those phones to my AV receiver, my PS5, my Pixel phone, my tablet, or my TV. I rarely have any problems: the audio is clear, the latency is not noticeable, and devices connect quickly and without fuss.
There are corner cases that cause annoyance, and those corner cases are indeed around where Apple is adding on top of Bluetooth: The ability to instantly switch the connected device without needing to disconnect from a previous device, and the ability to pair just by having the devices close. Those features are replicated in the Android ecosystem but are not standard.
If those two features are what you mean by "sucks" then fine. But that doesn't imply that Bluetooth doesnt work reliably, just that it doesn't have these two features broadly supported.
A difference here is that fast pairing and device switching on Android, while not a standard part of the protocol, is open for device manufacturers to support, unlike Apple's versions of these features.
I tried my Bose NC700 with my Pixel 6. It gave me the quick-pairing notification, asking me also to install an app, which ofc I said no to. Then when it was already paired, I got the pairing notification 6 more times during my call.
Probably doesn't happen for everyone, otherwise it'd be fixed. But that's how it always is with overly complicated stuff, edge cases everywhere.
I have a low end Bose bluetooth speaker that connects up instantly to any of my powered on devices (2x Macbook, iPhone), and can switch between them seamlessly with a button press. I've also never had any issues with Sony WHM1000XM* headphones regarding bluetooth across these devices.
My AirPods frequently hop between my MacBook and iPhone without asking though, because the other device played a split second audio clip.
Strong YMMV I guess.
What causes issues with the Bose? Both my QC35 and QC45s have been paired with multiple iPhone/pad/Mac and seem to work better than most other things.
My Bose NC700 can only remember 3 devices it seems. My corp-supplied laptop+phone put it over the limit, meaning I have to repair whenever I want to switch to another device, and it forgets one as a result (idk how it works, FIFO?). Pairing often takes a few tries, and it's even glitchier on the corp Android phone.
Earphone quality drops to something awful whenever the mic is in use. That's just cause of the BT standard. This gets more complicated with multiple devices involved.
I'll be listening to music on my work laptop with my headphones, my iPhone will get a call, it'll switch to the iPhone only to play a ringtone in my ears, then when I accept the call the iPhone will switch back to its own earpiece instead of my headphones. Juked!
Then some unpredictable things. Like it gets stuck connected to the wrong device, or it starts playing music when I turn them on, or it won't connect even with a device it should remember. I've had my BT headphones connect during a meeting, make my laptop start playing random music, then disconnect, causing the laptop to switch to full volume speakers and blast music into my meeting.
I don't fault Bose for any of this. These are the most reliable BT headphones I've ever owned. The standard just sucks. The iPhone side has issues like randomly switching to my car BT when I walk by wearing my headphones. The car BT can only pair to 1 device at a time, so my wife or I have to disable BT to free it up. Overall it's not worth vs just plugging in the darn cable.
I was gifted AirPods, but I'm on the Android ecosystem. I see a huge difference between what I can configure on an Apple device vs my Android devices. For example, on an Apple device I can enable features to help me hear better in a noisy environment which would be nice to have.
I wonder if they are using a proprietary configuration API that is deliberately kept secret or if no Android devs have figured out how to reverse engineer it yet (seems very unlikely).
If the likely former, I'd like someone to address this as well as it almost feels like if they're getting into hearing assistance features, then accessibility becomes important.
I mean, bose is known for selling cheap devices as high end for the past few decades. It's not uncommon for the BoM to be ~10% of the final price.
Yeah, and don't get me started on the audiophile perspective on Bose. Bose is an ear candy brand, what you hear out of them is not even close to what the audio engineer intended the experience to be. I won't fault anyone who's fine with them, but I would never buy a pair of Bose.
That being said, they absolutely excel at noise cancellation, and that's because their core market is airmen, Bose is used almost universally by pilots for their in-flight headsets. It's where they make their actual money.
Yes, they're nice headphones overall, but not the best for audio fidelity.
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