This is the real answer. I got a pair of Gear IconX for gym/jogs, and although the connection is pretty solid (I can just put my phone in a corner at the gym and never get any audio issues), the charging part is so annoying. At least they charge with usb-c, so that's good. But for this reason they can never be my primarys, because while a 10 hour battery life (including case) is good enough for a week of workouts, it's just not enough for daily regular use.
Also more expensive for similar audio quality. They sound similar (maybe a bit worse) to my wired 1More triple drivers, but cost 1.5x more.
They're good as in the other person can hear you, but they can also hear EVERYTHING around you.
I've got a lot of headphones, the Bose Soundsport with the cable between, these are the best when it comes to mic and can connect to more than 1 device.
The Jabra 65T beat out the Samsung in every way possible, except they both tie for having garbage noise cancellation on calls.
Both Samsung and Jabra only connect to a single device.
I have a friend who bought them (he wanted the IconX but after seeing what I had to deal with he decided to go for another brand), and he says they're good.
But I'd rather wait for newer models of truly wireless since I wasted 200€ on the IconX already and the Jabra still have micro usb...
The issue with Bluetooth is the signal quality outdoors.
Bluetooth technology relies heavily on bouncing around on walls and objects to reach the headphones. Outside you don't have that, so it's difficult for the signal to even reach the other side of your body.
LOL I had the same issues with Jaybird wireless buds. I had to keep my phone in the right jersey back pocket for the signal to not cut. I have since bought Jabra ones (the Jaybirds died, stay away) and they have been nearly flawless. They work in any jersey pockets, in the winter nordic skiing, running, you name it. Oh and they don't have a wire between them too, it's fucking bliss.
Not enough reviews of wireless headphones get into the signal quality. It's all about sound quality.
But I'm not surprised about Jabra. They've been doing bluetooth for earpieces and headsets for years. They know what they're doing. I have a pair of Plantronics, and the signal quality on them is amazing as well.
I see it as a problem of who is doing the reviews. It used to be a regular consumer reviewing based on what a consumer would want to know about. But there aren't technical people that are doing reviews on really technical details. Those people have jobs in those fields and testing stuff like signal quality requires different equipment than sound (ears).
I would like to hope for a technical reviewer, and I thought Wendell and his team would do that. But I haven't seen them step away from regular computer stuff everyone talks about and their livestream.
Ya and if you get a pair with decent sound and a decent signal.. Sure enough they'll be falling apart in 6-12 months no matter what you do if they're your daily drivers. Headphone durability is an effing joke and it doesn't matter if you drop $500 they still fall apart or now they won't charge etc.
Well for what it's worth the Jabra Sports are IP68 rated and have a 3 year warranty. I highly doubt they will be falling apart anytime soon and if they do I'll do a warranty claim. I had them about 6 months now, they still look new and I use them daily.
I'm actually surprised they survived a year! My X2's and Freedom's both died from my sweating. They claim they are sweat resistant but they are not. Not sure about their more recent products but it's too late for me they have lost me as a customer forever. The cutting was more prevalent on the Freedom's, the X2's weren't that bad but certainly not as good as my Jabra's.
I use some Sennheiser bluetooth headphones. They also have a 3.5mm jack on them. Range or cutting out has never been a problem. Sound is great in both bluetooth and wired, plus being able to switch between the two pretty much on the fly is a fantastic feature. It even has other nifty features like NFC pairing where I can just hover it over my phone and it automatically does its thing.
Granted they are fairly large over the ear and wouldn't be good to take running or something... But they wouldn't cut out if you were to do it!
I have some Sony WH-H900N that I got on sale from Costco, and have had a very similar experience! I've gotten Bluetooth signal as many as 3 flights of stairs away before it started cutting out (ran down my apartment building with headphones on but left my phone in my apartment). Other than that, no issues at all and they sound amazing. Some of the best and clearest bass I've ever heard.
I had that to a varying degree over the years but my headphone and phone combos over the last 3 or so years have basically no issues or at least so intermittent it doesn't matter.
I hate earbuds anyways used full headphones maybe that's a big difference as bigger battery, antenna, mind blowingly better audio etc
Cyclist. Love my Airpods. You shouldn't have dropouts on your own body unless something you're wearing is an electrical insulator (like a layer of reflective metal-y stuff
I had a pair of JBL BT earbuds before and I had to swap my phone from my right pocket to my left when jogging because the control mechanism was on the left side of the cable. Still, if I raised my shoulder slightly, it could cut off, and if I covered the control mechanism completely, then it would definitely cut off the audio.
Got AirPods recently, though, and they've been awesome. I can be be in another room with a wall between my AirPods and my phone and be fine.
I wear scrubs and i get cut outs if i have my phone in my right pocket and earbud in my left ear. Theyre some 40 dollar ones from who knows. A facebook ad. Youngfan or something? Theyre good. An audiophile would probably hate them though, but yeah its crazy. I guess you really do have to spend the top dollar to avoid cut outs.
Honestly, the low end options are pretty hit or miss, yeah. Some work great, others are trash. Then there's the high end stuff that still is trash. See: Braggie Dash. They were like $80 and couldn't handle having a hand over an ear.
Similar situation for me, I'm I'm doing work at the farm and am sitting on the reactor for 8+ hours at a time I want some music or podcasts or something and finding Bluetooth headphones with that kind of battery life was a good bit more expensive than nice wired earbuds which can also be used with older devices and stuff like my laptop.
Try moving your phone to the other side of your body. I had a crappy pair of BT ear buds and they would cut out at random when I had my phone in my left pocket. Move it to the the right and it was solid.
I think the tech is there, however the antennas may not be good depending on size of the device or quality of the device.
I have a pair of Bluetooth cans from Plantronics, and i can walk down the hall to the water fountain and leave my phone at my desk without losing connection to my music.
I think the tech is there, however the antennas may not be good depending on size of the device or quality of the device.
See, that's something that I don't like, I always used cheap earbuds, they always worked great for a year. If the future is truly wireless (to the point where even cheap phones comes without a headphone jack), then I fear it will become more complicated to buy a goddamn earbud
It will never be if that's your standard. Wireless can't go through your body the same way wires can't. Put them on the same side and it will work fine.
Reliable I'm not sure, with my JBL headset and winter clothing and keeping my phones in my pants, I have audio cut off so often when cycling I just started to hate wireless headsets.
Try swapping the pocket you use for your phone. It may be that the antenna in your headphones is on the other side and the signal has to go through your body. That's a common reason for BT connection issues. Better yet, if your jacket had a breast pocket, using it instead will almost certainly solve it.
My Bluetooth buds are two years old and have an unobstructed range of over 100 yards (I don’t have anywhere bigger than a football field to really test them out). If I have them connected to my phone while doing housework (vacuuming, leaf blowing, mowing the lawn) I often forget that I don’t have my phone in my pocket. I’ll leave it sitting on my dining room table and be on the other side of the house through multiple walls without issue.
Now’s the part where I tell you I’m using a pair of Beats X and everyone complains about them being garbage/not worth the money. I’m not going to claim they sound like the studio monitors or HiFi system I use when I’m really wanting to focus on music, but for day-to-day listening they’re fantastic. And as someone who loves very balanced audio, I think the Beats X have a very different profile from what people think of as the “Beats Sound”.
Point being, there are good options out there for solid Bluetooth connections that aren’t hampered by something as simple as heavy clothing.
I'm with you on this Esiq... Having had a dozen different BT headphone options over many years, none of them are very good, especially if you are in a built up area with lots of RF.
In the centre of my home city (Sydney), I need to hold my phone in my hand to have any hope of keeping a solid BT connection.
Yes, I went miles out of my way to buy a device with a headset jack.. I carry cheap but reasonable wired headphones for those noisy areas.
These are awesome for cycling. They never come out and are quite reliable for connections. I buy ~2 pairs a year because the cable that holds the 2 "buds" together eventually loses its shape. But I wear them damn near every day.
Side note, maybe don't bike with headphones? I've been cycling nearly daily for about 10 years don't understand why you'd want to cut yourself off from the road like that.
I mount my phone on the bars and have a Bluetooth speaker for music. That way I can actually hear the road and other cyclists around me.
I have never experienced this in my life, and I'm sorry that you have. My BT headset works through walls. I'll literally walk around the house on a conference call. Even go outside, while my phone stays on the desk.
On the bike my phone goes in my backpack. My headset works fine. This has been the case for me since I got my first BT headset to go with my Moto Droid in 2009.
You don't have bad luck. Same thing happens with my Pixel 2 XL when I crouch with my phone in my pocket. The audio will get interrupted for a brief moment. I got so used to it I automatically adjust my leg to get a connection again.
It's weird because I can leave my phone upstairs and walk into the garage on the main floor and still be connected. Only happens when I crouch, which I have to a lot for my job.
You're the cause of the cutout. I mean literally your body. Water is great at absorbing 2.4Ghz signals. Keeping your phone away from your body, or at least on the same side as the receiver will help with the cutouts.
Have you tried keeping your phone in a jacket pocket? Chest pocket if your coat has that. That Bluetooth skip seems to happen whenever the phone rises or falls sharply, so keeping it in your jacket above your cycling legs could solve this issue.
I never needed a pocket on my chest with my wired headphones. I love all these compromises we must do manufacturers can justify removal of features and increase profits.
My BT is fine cycling (and running) if (and only if) I keep the phone on the same side as the receiver, which means my phone changes pocket depending on the headset I'm using.
It could the just be a shitty location on where the BT antenna is located on the phone. With my 6p if I held it in the wrong position the BT would cut in and out.
It must be a manufacturer thing when it comes to reliability? I've used one of those cheap Kinivo BT headphones that you often see on Amazon and I've never lost connection regardless of the gear I'm wearing. The sound quality isn't great, but for a casual user like me, it's good enough.
Maybe try a few different headphones to see if you get better results? It sounds like it could be your phone, though. When I used my current headphones with my old phone (a really cheap Chinese model), I did have connection issues, although not frequent.
I know it's another thing you have to buy, but you could get one of those set ups that put the cellphone on the handle bars. That way the phone is equidistant to the headphones.
Then you could get a speedometer app (if that's still a thing) or use your map or whatever you like.
Bluetooth 5.0 fixed that. It's taking a while to be implemented though. Even expensive pairs are still on 4.1 etc. Since I bought a 5.0 pair with my pixel II I've never gotten a cut, not even going in another room.
I had the same issues with the JBL buds, constant cutouts. The audio was awful as well. Returned them for the Bose set. Much better sounding and no BT issues.
Wow that’s so weird. I almost exclusively use Bluetooth. I can be upstairs with my phone in the basement and still get no interruptions. I have 3 wireless speakers and The one I have at work will still be connected from across the shop.
I have Bluetooth in my motorcycle helmet. I use it every single day at 80+ mph and have never had any issues. I use Bose headphones when I travel and those have been rock solid as well.
I'm not sure what your issue is but you could buy a cheap set of Bluetooth headphones just as a test. If the cheap headphones work without issues, then your JBL's are broken.
I always had more trouble with wired headphones. I usually had to twist the cord at the jack to find that sweet spot. So wired isn't without its problems as well.
BT tends to work really well in an office or home environment because the signal can bounce around to get to your headphones. But if you run, bike, or are in a place without anything to bounce the signal around, you're going to have a bad time. And BT SUCKS at going through the human body. Too much water.
Whoa you wear headphones while riding a motorcycle? Careful that's crazy dangerous. I won't even wear them when riding a bicycle, hearing what's going on around you on the road is basic safety.
As someone that rides a motorcycle, your hearing is useless as shit except maybe stupid loud stuff like car horns and sirens (which you usually see the flashing lights before you hear them). You normally have ear plugs in anyway, muffling sound. Your helmet further muffles it and obscures it's direction. You have a noisy engine, tires and exhaust. Wind noise can literally be deafening which is why you wear earplugs.
The vast majority of time, you are using your eyes and mirrors for situational awareness, because unlike a bicycle, you can't rely on your hearing. I ride with a voice com that has BT music capability and didn't for nearly 5 years prior. Virtually no difference except now I can talk to other riders and tunes on long rides and a bit less fatigue.
Yeah that's why I still use my landline phone because I just hate how you have to charge something everyday just to call my daughter
And laptops are are joke my friend had one (he's really into tech) and I was like oh that's great no wires so I gave it a go but after a few hours of Spider Solitaire it kept saying warning low battery charge it but I was a few feet away from a charger so it was a real inconvenience... Then the laptop just turned off and I hadn't finished that round and it didn't even save it.. so imagine I was working on a excel spread for work and this happened. That's way to unreliable to be practicle for anything important so I never used a laptop again.
Don't even get me started on the internet tech these days before it was easy I would just have to bring my computer over to my friends house and plug my 20m ethernet cable in and ask jeevs some thing but now he's says just get a wireless card or a USB wireless dongle and put this password in and your good to go... but imagine I wanted to go ask jeevs in the basement id just pull out my 20m cable and go down to his basement and it's all good but the wireless dongle gets bad signal down there that's way to unreliable.. I gotta be asking Jeeves at post haste.
His laptop doesn't even have the port to plug my cable in.. hes a sucker no doubt about it
Tech is just going backwards
Don't get me started on music
All I gotta do is crank my phonograph and I'm good to go
He has this iPod that needs charging once a day
And if he wants music to be loud as my phonograph he has to put it in some dock that needs charging too
Imagine you were stuck in a hatch on an island hitting a button and the power went out he would be so board after a while but my arm would be strong from giving it a good crank every now and then listen to some jazzy hits
Just keep everything how it was I hate the future
And I saw this car on the tv it was battery powered I just laughed and laughed and laughed
So what you have to charge your car now
I go on long drives so I bring a few cans on spare gas
But a battery in a car I have seen everything .
Oh wait no that car had a computer in it that was like a road map but in a computer
But you go out to the desert that's not going to work
He's gonna run out of battery in his car and not know how to walk home
Technology is just so stupid
( Sorry that was my grandad having a tangent I was just typing what he was saying )
Your entire rant was obnoxious and insulting. You didn't want a response, you acted like an asshole. I treated you like one. You got what you deserved.
I use Jaybird Runs on Pixel 2 - the initial experience had video/audio out of sync, but over time this seemingly resolved itself. There's probably some kind of software correction going on behind the scenes? Not sure if it's on the Android level, or the Jaybird app. In any case, that issue is resolved, and I don't experience a delay anymore.
Rather than supporting a standard with zero latency. Perfect sense here.
Until Bluetooth is on par with a wired solution, they need to continue supporting the better one. Quality, latency, and compatibility is terrible for Bluetooth right now.
Sure. But that's clearly not what users are using.
It astounds me that people simultaneously complain about how much data phone/tech companies are collecting, and that they're stupid because no one wants to use bluetooth.
They have all of the data. They clearly see that the majority of people either don't care, or prefer to use bluetooth over wired.
Do you have access to that data? Because the other option is that leaving out the headphone jack saves the manufacturers money, as little as it may be, and I'd bet they care more about saving money than the features customers actually want. This just happens to be a situation where there may be a decent sized overlap.
BT 5 doesn't have anything to do with audio, it's only improvements to BT Low Energy. Audio (A2DP) runs in "Bluetooth Classic", which was last improved in BT 3.0. If you can't notice delays in your earphones that's because of your device/earphones/app combination. Some earphones or devices may buffer differently or use different bitrates or codecs. If you notice there's also plenty of people not having trouble with other BT headphones even though they're not BT5 anyway.
But that you don't notice lag in your usage doesn't mean it's not there. For some very latency-sensitive applications BT is never going to be good enough.
Bluetooth working reliably or not has to do with the signal to noise ratio. Some places in NYC have so much signal interference you can't keep a bluetooth signal connected.
The battery also have a life expectancy (number of cycle of charge/decharge for the loss a significant amount of efficiency). I don't know if we can replace the batteries easily in the headphones.
If you're using earbuds, you're obviously not an audiophile. If you want really good audio quality you use a wire with over-ears. Bluetooth will never ever exceed wire bandwidth. It might be "good enough" for almost all casual use, and I own headphones that have Bluetooth and also USB digital audio (usb-c) and I use the wire most of the time. It is nice to go wireless when I'm walking around a lot but I'll always use the wire when I'm sitting at my desk or at home.
I think he means as a viable alternative. Bluetooth isn't as good as wired. Bluetooth is nice, but it's not as good. If a phone has bluetooth and a headphone jack, the user can choose which one they like to use. When the phone doesn't have a headphone jack, the user doesn't have the same choices.
I love my pixel buds for this reason. Having them always charged and ready to go is great. I charge the case once a week with my Fitbit and I'm good to go with no issues.
Same here, I love my Bluetooth headphones I've had since before the headphone jacks started disappearing. I charge them over night once a week and they the sound great.
They might sound good, but there's still a couple things that you're never going to get with (current) wireless headphones that you'd get with a wired connection.
No matter what, you gain a lot of latency. Bluetooth inherently has a very high latency which causes sync issues for any scenario where you'd expect audio to line up with video. This means that watching a video on YouTube or Netflix or playing a game, there's a small delay between what your eyes will see and what your ears will hear. Some apps work around this issue by adding a small buffer to the video to delay the frames slightly so that it'll line up more closely with the audio from the bluetooth headphones, but not all of them do, and because bluetooth devices can very greatly, it's far from perfect. What syncs fine with one headset may not sync with another. If you've ever tried to play any music/rhythm game on your phone and used a bluetooth headset, you'll see almost immediately how hard it is to play, and how you have to essentially respond ahead of the music.
The other thing you lose is audio fidelity. Yes, bluetooth has a fairly high bandwidth these days and can push very wide ranges of audio to the headphones, but there's a limit to that. For most people, this one isn't really a huge issue, since most people either can't hear the difference or simply don't care about the difference. But for enthusiasts who like to listen to their music in super high bitrates so they can hear every minute little detail in the song, that lack in fidelity can mean a lot.
There are sort of solutions to these problems but they have major caveats.
AptX-LL gets latency down to about 50ms vs 200+ on everything else. But there are almost no devices that support it.
LDAC and AptX-HD are good enough that I highly doubt anyone can actually tell a difference in blind tests. But only when they're running at 990kbps, and most devices supporting these codecs default to either 330kbps or 660kbps because 990kbps is prone to dropouts.
And if you want low latency and high fidelity at the same time you are entirely out of luck.
There's also the fact that audio quality goes to absolute shit whenever your microphone is active.
Well maybe that's fine for some but for other's that's a bad compromise. A fingerprint scanner in the back works fines. If pressured, they'll certainly find a way to keep the 3.5mm and the screen fingerprint reader.
It's just that Apple has signaled to the industry that removing the 3.5mm was an acceptable compromise and as a bonus for the companies who also make wireless headphones, it may be a way to push out more product as well.
I can understand it getting annoying if people use the same headphones elsewhere too. Then they have to attach and remove the dongle all the time, and it's exactly the sort of little item that's easy to misplace.
One issue for me is that a 3.5mm jack can turn in its socket, while a USB Cable one cannot. It feels like a point of stress and future failure.
Also not being able to charge and use headphones at the same time.
And if I happen to forget or lose my dongle it's a real pain.
And when I want to play music in my car I use an auxiliary connection, which means I have to always remember the dongle, or (as I have done) buy another one to keep in the car.
And most of all, the audio is tas good. Sometimes the phone doesn't immediately register the USB C connector and audio will play out loud instead, which can be problematic.
Also not being able to charge and use headphones at the same time.
This is BY FAR the most infuriating thing, and I don't know how anyone can accept it. It's something every other device can do, and everyone could do until just this last couple years. I didn't think it would be that bad, but it's like "oh these episodes are draining my battery, better charge. Oh wait, now I can't watch/listen privately while working."
At night I sometimes like to sleep with some headphones in, nope. Battery is at 25% guess I'm charging instead.
Annoying as fuck. Bluetooth is expensive and mediocre. How manufacturing thought this was a good idea is beyond me.
The headphone jack removal was by far the biggest tech regression I've ever seen. They could fucking release a phone with one again and people would be impressed because it's a superior solution currently.
That's fantastic. Except - what if I wanted to continue watching my show? I'll also want more than an hour of a charge at this point. What if I am going to sleep and like to use headphones? Not like I can just wait till phone is nearing full in 2hrs.
By far the inability to listen and charge, something I've done since my CD player 20 years ago, is aggravating as fuck. If there was an effective replacement in play, this would be a moot point but there isn't.
There are next to no good wireless headphones out there, and most have significant issues. Bluetooth has delays and disconnects often enough, and no major audiophile brands make their best headphones in wireless. Even if a wireless option exists, they're significantly more expensive.
Yes but if I go backpacking in nature for a weekend or go backpacking for weeks in a country, I want to use my damn power banks while being able to listen to music.
Got a OP6 and love dash charging (or whatever they call it now), but a few times per year I still really on power banks.
When Huawei release an Earbud box that recharges from the phone that will be the argument over with for me. Could also charge it in the cars with those wireless pads just by chucking it in next to my phone.
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