There was a lot of talk of earbuds in the Android thread and I have some questions of my own so I thought I’d start a new thread. Of course I did my due diligence and did not search to see if there already was an existing thread.
I’m totally onboard the wireless earbud train, just for the convenience and portability. I’m perfectly happy with cheap earbuds. I don’t ever see myself buying Airpods or Pixel buds or whatever Samsung calls their version. I’ve got some kind of Soundpeats for listening to podcasts or YouTube that cost me $40 and I’m perfectly happy with them. One thing I’m not happy with is the fact I consume content on both my phone and my iPad and I find it such a pain in the ass when I’m connected to one but then want to listen to another as the buds remember what they were last connected to so I essentially have to go into that device and turn off the Bluetooth so that they don’t automatically connect to that device rather than connecting to the device that I want them to. Are there any cheap wireless buds out there that have multipoint so that I can connect to two devices at once or would I have to get a premium pair in order to get that feature?
It doesn’t need to be premium but you do want a good pair since bluetooth quality is all over the place. Jabra 65s are quite good if you want something cheaper than the higher end models.
I use these and they have multipoint, but it’s not completely seamless unfortunately.
I still really like them a lot though. Great sound quality and battery life considering the price. And I’m glad there’s one wire between them so they can dangle around my neck. I’ve used AirPods a bit and don’t like how I need to put them in my pocket or something when temporarily not using them.
Even on my Bose headphones it will sometimes (like, maybe once every couple of months) get confused and “resume” on my iPad instead of my phone, but generally it works really well when you’re actually switching between devices.
This is the exact reason I went to airpods and I couldn’t be happier. $80 bucks is more than $40, but I feel I’ve avoided much more than $40 dollars worth of frustration since I made the switch.
My airpods seamlessly pair with any of the devices I want to use 'em with. You do have to pull up the device and say "connect to ", but that takes like 3 seconds and you’re good to go with one action. There’s no fiddling around and repairing, which is the bane of my other bluetooth headphones.
So, I bought the OnePlus Buds Z earbuds, and I really love the feel and workflows of these. I see the appeal of Airpods now.
While they work great with every device I’ve tested with (my OnePlus phone, chromebook, very very little latency to my Switch) they seem to keep cutting out and having connection issues to both my windows desktop and laptop. It isn’t an issue with defective ones because I do see some chatter about other people having the issue, even on replacements.
Is this just a Bluetooth on windows sucks thing, or do I need to just exchange it for a new brand?
The only thing I’m worried about with a new brand is making sure I get good latency to the switch, so I can have sound while gaming on the couch with one earbud in (so I can still hear the wife).
I can’t speak to the OnePlus Buds in particular, but I found moving to a Bluetooth 5.2 set made all the difference in the world for connectivity. My current daily driver earbuds ( Between Pro Wireless Earbuds by Status Audio by Status) connect the first time, everytime, on every device.
They were on sale for cyber Monday so I bought the OnePlus Buds Pro to see if they worked better. I haven’t had any cut out so far on my desktop even with my BT 5.0 card so that seems like a win (and they are better earbuds anyway). I just need to make sure they still get low latency to the switch.
I still have a Bluetooth 5.2 PCIE card coming from Amazon, so I’ll swap it out and replace the 5.0 one (horray free returns).
However, one interesting thing I found out was when I connected my Pro earbuds to the PC I got 2 audio devices, a Stereo and a Hands Free AG. From reading it appears that Bluetooth supports only stereo output with no input, or input and output with lower quality audio. If I load up the recorder app while listening to music on stereo the stereo stops until I stop the recorder app. Apparently Bluetooth (5.0?) doesn’t have the bandwidth to support both stereo output and mic input at the same time.
Which makes me think the issue with the OnePlus Buds Z was it was (mis?) detecting something wanting the mic, so it would cut out the stereo output temporarily every so often.
I got the 3rd generation airpods, and they have been excellent for connectivity over long distances, and switch devices with ease. There were stories posted in one of the apple threads about the “smart” source switching being more trouble than it was worth, but it seems to work well for me to switch between apple devices. It might be absolute garbage with a PC, though, so I don’t want to oversell.
