Sony WH-1000XM5 (which I use in both wired and Bluetooth modes)
Galaxy Fold 4
MacBook Air M1
These are all fairly recent devices, with the Sony one being the most recent headphones in it’s series, running the latest firmware too, which was released last month.
Now here are my issues:
- Fold 4: When I get a call on Google Meet or Duo and I turn on my headphones, the audio doesn’t work. I have to disconnect the call, close the app, and reconnect for it to work.
- MacBook: Similar thing happens with Microsoft Teams. In this case though, my headphones is already paired with my MacBook and connected, so I fire up Teams (from scratch) and dial in to a meeting. You’d expect it to work fine right, but the audio doesn’t work, even though Teams detects my headphones as the output device. I have to turn my headphones off and on during the call (or reboot my MacBook) for it to work properly.
I can reproduce these issues consistently. I’m not a 100% sure if it’s an issue with my Sony headphones, but the point is, all these products that I’ve listed are fairly recent and fairly expensive, and I deserve a better user experience. Bluetooth has indeed come a long way, and at least for me, audio quality isn’t really an issue, but the fact that these sort of connectivity issues are still occurring on recent, premium devices, is unacceptable.
Those all sound like software issues from Sony on their headset, rather than limitations of Bluetooth. I have a pair of BOSS that is connected to both my laptop and phone at the same time, and the switch between them is seemless.
Listen to music on phone. Pause, go to laptop. Put on a video on YouTube. And it instantly switches to my laptop for sound.
Be on a call on discord from my phone while I’m out. Get home, enter the call from laptop, and boom. Automatically switched from phone to laptop and I don’t have to change a single setting.
Sorry you have a bad experience with SONY. But I can assure you. It’s not a Bluetooth problem. It’s a SONY problem.
Well, my point still stands. How is one supposed to know that this particular headset had these sort of issues? I did extensive research before buying mine, and no one reported any such issues. Admittedly, it was still fairly new when I purchased it so there may not have that many reviews, but Sony isn’t some random brand and their audio gear is generally well received.
On the other hand, I could just pick up any cheapo TRRS headset and know that it’ll work without a cinch. We’re just not there yet with wireless headsets if we can’t even rely on reputed brands to work consistently.
If you’re asking how someone is supposed to know without knowing then the answer is you can’t. Obviously.
You looked at biased reviews that had clearly not tested the product in the manner of which you wanted to use it. You made a bad purchase. I’m sorry. But that’s not the fault of Bluetooth. That’s the fault of Sony.
Are you going to claim that smartphones are hot garbage just because Nokia made a really shitty one? They were a reputable phone brand too. Until they weren’t. Maybe you just learned that the hard way with Sony.
The thing is, it’s not just me/Sony. There’s been several reports of similar sort of issues for wireless headphones in general.
And in comparison, there’s very little issues with wired, so my point still stands - wireless audio still has issues - I don’t care if it’s a fault with Bluetooth or an implementation bug on the headphones or the app or the OS, the point is, there are still issues that you may be unaware of when buying a wireless headphones, when there’s next to none with wired.
You’re quick to blame Sony, but if you can’t trust a reputable Japanese brand who’ve been making audio equipment for over 70 years now, who can you trust? Afterall, reviews are “biased” and can’t be trusted, so I guess it’s down to pure luck then, right? And even if you get lucky and think you’ve made a good buy, there’s no guarantee that something won’t break with a future update. For instance, here’s a thread where someone’s mic stopped working after a Windows update - turns out that the fault was with the Intel Bluetooth drivers, and downgrading the drivers or the update fixes it. Who wants to put up with this sort of nonsense when you’ve got a meeting or an interview to attend to, and suddenly you find your headphones no longer work because of a fricking update?
This sort of unreliability is precisely why many people prefer sticking to the tried and trusted wired headphones.
It’s not worth arguing with @atomic Apparently my pixel, with pixel buds and watch with wearos is also a software issue. As if the software issue might not lie within the software that drives the Bluetooth protocol, I. E. Bluetooth itself🙄
Your argument is irrational. So because Ford makes terrible quality cars all cars are bad? I mean. If we can’t trust the company that made the first industrially made car, then who can we trust? After all, there’s so very little that can go wrong with a bicycle or ones own legs.
I talked about Sony because YOU said you had problem with them. Where you admit that you bought it very close after launch where not many reviews had come out.
You think wired headsets can’t get fucked by faulty drivers? Have you ever had an issue with your audio drivers as a whole? I have. Doesn’t matter if you use wired or wireless then.
I’m telling you point blank. There are good products where it works seemless between different devices. But you just won’t have it cause you had a bad experience once with a poor purchase from your end.
If you wanna use wired by my guest. More products on the shelf for me. But your stance against Bluetooth as a whole is ridiculous. Shall we say wired headsets are garbage because what it the wire gets damaged? Man cable close to the the male connection always end up breaking! Terribly unreliable!
In all my life I’ve never had a problem with wired headset not working due to driver issues. Sure there were the occasional overall sound card issues, but those were dating back to the Windows 9x days. Also, theoretically and statistically speaking, a wireless setup has more parts and more complexities, so it’s more likely to fail.
There are good products where it works seemless between different devices
Citation needed. And I repeat my previous question - how exactly is one supposed to discover these set of devices? What if you say use a particular model of Thinkpad and the device wasn’t tested against it? I doubt there exists a database somewhere that has list of every wireless headset tested against every Bluetooth capable device. So ultimately it’s up to the luck of draw, and that’s not a very good user experience. Whereas with wired, I can he 100% sure a wired headset will work if a device has the matching aux jack.
Also, the wire getting damaged isn’t really a problem, any decent wired headset would have a replaceable wire, so you can always swap it out with any standard TRS/TRRS cable and you’re good to go. Whereas with wireless, the battery is almost guaranteed to degrade after a few years, and it can be really hard or even impossible to replace, depending on the model.
Aha… so now that it comes to wired, the “how are you supposed to know” doesn’t apply anymore?
You bought a shitty wireless and use that to hate on the entire protocol.
I’ve bought bad wired ones where the wire breaks easily, but the same logic doesn’t seem to apply there for you.
Any decent wired headset has easily replaceable cables?
Any decent wireless won’t have the problems you’ve mentioned. And the battery is not going to be a problem for many many years. My boss ones are on their fourth year. Still get out 7-8 hours of non stop usage which is more than enough for me.
But sure. They do degrade. That’s factually true and inevitable. It’s part of the price for the convenience of not having to deal with a cable.
But you hit the nail on the head yourself. “Any decent headset”. Same thing can be applied to wired, as wireless. Buy decent products and you won’t have issues.
“How are you supposed to know” goes for both too. You can’t tailor your argument to only work for one type and ignore it for the other.
You bought a shitty wireless and use that to hate on the entire protocol.
The WH-1000XM5 isn’t a shitty wireless headphone, it has issues but I wouldn’t call it shitty. If it really was that shitty then it wouldn’t have a positive rating on sites like Amazon, WhatHiFi, Soundguys etc. In saying that, I do consider it worse than a wired headphone, but that I believe is because of the limitations of current wireless technology. Thankfully it also has a wired mode which works fine, and the ANC works well too, so it’s not completely useless to the point that I’d call it “shitty”. It certainly is flawed, and annoying at times.
I’ve bought bad wired ones where the wire breaks easily, but the same logic doesn’t seem to apply there for you.
That’s because wires are cheap and easy to repair or replace. What will you do when a wireless headphones breaks or doesn’t work as intended? The only realistic option is to replace it, which will either create more e-waste, or just be a PITA in general, trying to find another headphones that work.
Any decent wired headset has easily replaceable cables?
Of course. I’m not taking about those cheapo $2 headsets that you’d find in a dollar store.
Any decent wireless won’t have the problems you’ve mentioned
But mine did though, and also, lithium batteries degrade over time, and that is an undeniable fact. It’s also an undeniable fact that it’s extremely difficult or even next to impossible to replace the battery on most of these headphones.
Still get out 7-8 hours of non stop usage which is more than enough for me.
Good for you, but that’s not enough for me. Every now and then I take a 16+ hour flight (with maybe a 6-10 hr halt), so that battery life isn’t going to cut it. And with most of these headphones, you can’t use them while charging either.
Buy decent products and you won’t have issues.
And my original point still stands. How exactly is one supposed to figure out what’s a decent wireless headset? The WH-1000XM5 is still rated very highly on pretty much every website. By all definitions, it’s supposed to be a decent headset. If you’ve got some sort of secret website or method to determine if a headset is decent or not, I’m all ears.
“How are you supposed to know” goes for both too. You can’t tailor your argument to only work for one type and ignore it for the other.
Not really, because my experience is primarily with wired headphones, so I’ve already got a winning formula for selecting decent wired headphones - the ones which have a replaceable wire are decent, anything beyond that would be nitpicking on the audio quality like audiophiles do, or minor things like ear fit and noise isolation etc - but all that would boil down to personal preference. On the other hand, I don’t have a working formula for picking decent wireless headphones, so if you do, please share.
So I have a:
These are all fairly recent devices, with the Sony one being the most recent headphones in it’s series, running the latest firmware too, which was released last month.
Now here are my issues:
- Fold 4: When I get a call on Google Meet or Duo and I turn on my headphones, the audio doesn’t work. I have to disconnect the call, close the app, and reconnect for it to work.
- MacBook: Similar thing happens with Microsoft Teams. In this case though, my headphones is already paired with my MacBook and connected, so I fire up Teams (from scratch) and dial in to a meeting. You’d expect it to work fine right, but the audio doesn’t work, even though Teams detects my headphones as the output device. I have to turn my headphones off and on during the call (or reboot my MacBook) for it to work properly.
I can reproduce these issues consistently. I’m not a 100% sure if it’s an issue with my Sony headphones, but the point is, all these products that I’ve listed are fairly recent and fairly expensive, and I deserve a better user experience. Bluetooth has indeed come a long way, and at least for me, audio quality isn’t really an issue, but the fact that these sort of connectivity issues are still occurring on recent, premium devices, is unacceptable.
My guess would be its Sonys fault. I have a JBL Flip 5 which works perfectly with my Phone but my Sony srs xg 300 has similar issues as u discribed.
Those all sound like software issues from Sony on their headset, rather than limitations of Bluetooth. I have a pair of BOSS that is connected to both my laptop and phone at the same time, and the switch between them is seemless.
Listen to music on phone. Pause, go to laptop. Put on a video on YouTube. And it instantly switches to my laptop for sound.
Be on a call on discord from my phone while I’m out. Get home, enter the call from laptop, and boom. Automatically switched from phone to laptop and I don’t have to change a single setting.
Sorry you have a bad experience with SONY. But I can assure you. It’s not a Bluetooth problem. It’s a SONY problem.
Well, my point still stands. How is one supposed to know that this particular headset had these sort of issues? I did extensive research before buying mine, and no one reported any such issues. Admittedly, it was still fairly new when I purchased it so there may not have that many reviews, but Sony isn’t some random brand and their audio gear is generally well received.
On the other hand, I could just pick up any cheapo TRRS headset and know that it’ll work without a cinch. We’re just not there yet with wireless headsets if we can’t even rely on reputed brands to work consistently.
I don’t think your point stands at all.
If you’re asking how someone is supposed to know without knowing then the answer is you can’t. Obviously.
You looked at biased reviews that had clearly not tested the product in the manner of which you wanted to use it. You made a bad purchase. I’m sorry. But that’s not the fault of Bluetooth. That’s the fault of Sony.
Are you going to claim that smartphones are hot garbage just because Nokia made a really shitty one? They were a reputable phone brand too. Until they weren’t. Maybe you just learned that the hard way with Sony.
The thing is, it’s not just me/Sony. There’s been several reports of similar sort of issues for wireless headphones in general.
And in comparison, there’s very little issues with wired, so my point still stands - wireless audio still has issues - I don’t care if it’s a fault with Bluetooth or an implementation bug on the headphones or the app or the OS, the point is, there are still issues that you may be unaware of when buying a wireless headphones, when there’s next to none with wired.
You’re quick to blame Sony, but if you can’t trust a reputable Japanese brand who’ve been making audio equipment for over 70 years now, who can you trust? Afterall, reviews are “biased” and can’t be trusted, so I guess it’s down to pure luck then, right? And even if you get lucky and think you’ve made a good buy, there’s no guarantee that something won’t break with a future update. For instance, here’s a thread where someone’s mic stopped working after a Windows update - turns out that the fault was with the Intel Bluetooth drivers, and downgrading the drivers or the update fixes it. Who wants to put up with this sort of nonsense when you’ve got a meeting or an interview to attend to, and suddenly you find your headphones no longer work because of a fricking update?
This sort of unreliability is precisely why many people prefer sticking to the tried and trusted wired headphones.
It’s not worth arguing with @atomic Apparently my pixel, with pixel buds and watch with wearos is also a software issue. As if the software issue might not lie within the software that drives the Bluetooth protocol, I. E. Bluetooth itself🙄
Your argument is irrational. So because Ford makes terrible quality cars all cars are bad? I mean. If we can’t trust the company that made the first industrially made car, then who can we trust? After all, there’s so very little that can go wrong with a bicycle or ones own legs.
I talked about Sony because YOU said you had problem with them. Where you admit that you bought it very close after launch where not many reviews had come out.
You think wired headsets can’t get fucked by faulty drivers? Have you ever had an issue with your audio drivers as a whole? I have. Doesn’t matter if you use wired or wireless then.
I’m telling you point blank. There are good products where it works seemless between different devices. But you just won’t have it cause you had a bad experience once with a poor purchase from your end.
If you wanna use wired by my guest. More products on the shelf for me. But your stance against Bluetooth as a whole is ridiculous. Shall we say wired headsets are garbage because what it the wire gets damaged? Man cable close to the the male connection always end up breaking! Terribly unreliable!
In all my life I’ve never had a problem with wired headset not working due to driver issues. Sure there were the occasional overall sound card issues, but those were dating back to the Windows 9x days. Also, theoretically and statistically speaking, a wireless setup has more parts and more complexities, so it’s more likely to fail.
Citation needed. And I repeat my previous question - how exactly is one supposed to discover these set of devices? What if you say use a particular model of Thinkpad and the device wasn’t tested against it? I doubt there exists a database somewhere that has list of every wireless headset tested against every Bluetooth capable device. So ultimately it’s up to the luck of draw, and that’s not a very good user experience. Whereas with wired, I can he 100% sure a wired headset will work if a device has the matching aux jack.
Also, the wire getting damaged isn’t really a problem, any decent wired headset would have a replaceable wire, so you can always swap it out with any standard TRS/TRRS cable and you’re good to go. Whereas with wireless, the battery is almost guaranteed to degrade after a few years, and it can be really hard or even impossible to replace, depending on the model.
Aha… so now that it comes to wired, the “how are you supposed to know” doesn’t apply anymore?
You bought a shitty wireless and use that to hate on the entire protocol.
I’ve bought bad wired ones where the wire breaks easily, but the same logic doesn’t seem to apply there for you.
Any decent wired headset has easily replaceable cables?
Any decent wireless won’t have the problems you’ve mentioned. And the battery is not going to be a problem for many many years. My boss ones are on their fourth year. Still get out 7-8 hours of non stop usage which is more than enough for me.
But sure. They do degrade. That’s factually true and inevitable. It’s part of the price for the convenience of not having to deal with a cable.
But you hit the nail on the head yourself. “Any decent headset”. Same thing can be applied to wired, as wireless. Buy decent products and you won’t have issues.
“How are you supposed to know” goes for both too. You can’t tailor your argument to only work for one type and ignore it for the other.
The WH-1000XM5 isn’t a shitty wireless headphone, it has issues but I wouldn’t call it shitty. If it really was that shitty then it wouldn’t have a positive rating on sites like Amazon, WhatHiFi, Soundguys etc. In saying that, I do consider it worse than a wired headphone, but that I believe is because of the limitations of current wireless technology. Thankfully it also has a wired mode which works fine, and the ANC works well too, so it’s not completely useless to the point that I’d call it “shitty”. It certainly is flawed, and annoying at times.
That’s because wires are cheap and easy to repair or replace. What will you do when a wireless headphones breaks or doesn’t work as intended? The only realistic option is to replace it, which will either create more e-waste, or just be a PITA in general, trying to find another headphones that work.
Of course. I’m not taking about those cheapo $2 headsets that you’d find in a dollar store.
But mine did though, and also, lithium batteries degrade over time, and that is an undeniable fact. It’s also an undeniable fact that it’s extremely difficult or even next to impossible to replace the battery on most of these headphones.
Good for you, but that’s not enough for me. Every now and then I take a 16+ hour flight (with maybe a 6-10 hr halt), so that battery life isn’t going to cut it. And with most of these headphones, you can’t use them while charging either.
And my original point still stands. How exactly is one supposed to figure out what’s a decent wireless headset? The WH-1000XM5 is still rated very highly on pretty much every website. By all definitions, it’s supposed to be a decent headset. If you’ve got some sort of secret website or method to determine if a headset is decent or not, I’m all ears.
Not really, because my experience is primarily with wired headphones, so I’ve already got a winning formula for selecting decent wired headphones - the ones which have a replaceable wire are decent, anything beyond that would be nitpicking on the audio quality like audiophiles do, or minor things like ear fit and noise isolation etc - but all that would boil down to personal preference. On the other hand, I don’t have a working formula for picking decent wireless headphones, so if you do, please share.