And I want to use those same headphones with airplane seat back entertainment systems. Those will probably never support Bluetooth.

They’re going away in general as airlines look to save weight and slim seatbacks, and recognise that the vast majority of people have a portable entertainment device with them.

That may have been a brief trend on domestic flights with older airframes, but that isn't the general aviation trend. The last thing you want is more lithium batteries charging and discharging on a long flight over the ocean.

A few months ago I flew across the pacific. I'd say half the passengers watched something on their own devices.

That ship, of fewer devices, has sailed.

This doesn’t make much sense. If there’s an explosive risk, then it’s going to be a huge risk over land as well, and it doesn’t make sense that they’d be increasingly putting outlets at every seat.

>If there’s an explosive risk, then it’s going to be a huge risk over land as well

However overland flights ( generally ) don't route up to 240 minutes flying time from the nearest diversion airfield.

Four hours is a long, long time with a cabin fire.

How does this fit with the trend of carriers adding WiFi?

The WiFi on planes is satellite and something like 256 Kbps with extreme latency. It works fine for light web browsing and email, but it's unusable for video streaming. Your options are to pre-load entertainment or watch what the plane has pre-loaded in the seat-back entertainment screens.

This is changing. Gogo has new technology that’s supposed to be up to 100 mb/s, though I’m sure real-world will be lower.

I hope not. I fly Delta specifically because I can watch new release movies and other entertainment on board. It's amazing for those cross country flights. I hate flying United which has no such option.

I love flying United (or Jetblue or Alaska), they usually have access to Amazon Prime movies for free. And they tend to have plug outlets and chargers at all the seats.

Ah, it must just be the route I am on then. That is unfortunate. They don't even have screens.

Presumably all those devices have Bluetooth?

Isn't this what the promise of BlueTooth is? No connector at all but connects to everything.

But no headphoneless smartphone for me. I love my (Audio-Technica) headphone.

My experience with BlueTooth devices has been sub-optimal. They never seem to connect "cleanly" and always involve some degree of turning the device off and on again, turning BT on the computer off and on again, trying both in a different order, trying to figure out the magical combination of buttons to press on the device to get it to try to "re-pair", etc. I have had this problem with multiple devices and multiple computers.

And then, yes, if it does connect, the quality is poor.

All I want to do is use the solution that simply and easily works for me and CONTINUES to work and isn't being replaced for what seems to be a money-making opportunity.

I have the same experience with many Bluetooth devices, but I have to say that my Bose QC35 headphones are almost flawless. Definitely one of the greatest things I ever bought.

They even handle gracefully playing music from my laptop and when I shut it down, they automatically reconnect to my phone without any interaction. This sounds simple but I've had many pains with similar stuff with previous devices.

Strange, cause the QC30/35 is known to have pairing problems when pairing using bluetooth LE enabled.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/833322/pair-bose-quietcomfor...

Are you sure it's not only a problem with Linux? No issue with my QC35 and macOS, Windows 10 and Android, always connects to my devices, albeit a little slow to connect sometimes.

It's probably a Linux issue. I have a pair and they work flawlessly with my Macs and iPhone, but are very unreliable with my Fedora laptop.

What you are describing is exactly what Apple’s W1 chip does. Pair once with any of your iDevices, and you can then switch sources with a one or two taps/clicks. Of course this requires you to be firmly in the Apple ecosystem, and the AirPods are deficient in both audio quality and noise isolation, but the ‘ease-of-use’ problem has been solved.

> And then, yes, if it does connect, the quality is poor.

I'm doubtful that the problem is the protocol/connection method, but rather components and pricing. Bluetooth headphones are inhertentily more expensive, so there's less 'budget' for higher quality audio components, or the priorities are different.

Bluetooth was originally for phone-level quality and it has taken a while for devices to support higher quality codecs.

Audio quality on my headphones (Senheiser M2) is better via Bluetooth than wired. Not sure why.

The built in DAC/amp on 'heiser is likely better than the piece of crap serving the 3.5mm jack in your phone.

Faulty wire

Didn't think of that, haven't tested it but strongly doubt it. I'd expect a faulty wire to crackle predictably when moved which isn't what I experience.

There can be many kinds of faulty. Some faulty wires crackle when there is something broken that comes into (and goes out of) contact when moved.

For example, having uneven thickness will noticeably reduce audio quality like you mention.

I don't want to have to use a separate battery for my headphones or waste phone battery on powering a Bluetooth radio.

> connects to everything

Except when it doesn't. Or you left it paired to the wrong thing, which results in a lot of comedy bluetooth speaker moments.

(It's only recently that the industry converged on BTLE that actually worked on both Apple and non-Apple devices)

If you connect your bluetooth headphones to your phone, tablet and laptop, you're going to have a pretty bad time, as changing connected devices with no user interface is always a massive pain. Also, general issue with bluetooth headphones - you know that tiny microscopic battery in them? Yeah, that's going to die at some point, and then you need to buy a new pair.

>If you connect your bluetooth headphones to your phone, tablet and laptop, you're going to have a pretty bad time

I don't know. I think it depends a lot on the devices you have.

I have Bose QC35 headphones, and use them every day with my work and personal macbook, and my iPhone.

The connections are completely seamless. Here's how it's usually for me:

I turn them on at home, they automatically connect to my iPhone and macbook. I usually play music (spotify) on my laptop, when I leave for work I just open spotify on my phone and select "listen on this phone" and they automatically switch audio input.

When I come into work the headphones automatically connect to my work laptop and I can continue playing spotify there. All of these connections take a second or two.

In case I get a call the audio input/output automatically changes to my phone and I can take the call, and switches back when I'm done.

Plus I get about 15-20 hours of music listening time with one charge. So charging them isn't a big deal either.

It's great that hear that Bose has it sorted out, but it's usually not the case - all bluetooth headphones I tried so far can only stay connected to one device at the time, even if they can remember multiple pairings. So if I switch them on and both my phone and my laptop are nearby, it's a pure lottery which one is going to connect to them - and then I have to manually disable bluetooth on one device to make it connect to the other. It's just a massive pain in the ass to use.

Sennheiser has this figured out, too. My PXC 550 stay connected to two devices at the same time. When the currently active one goes quiet, it'll switch to the other source if that's active.

Works fine with my UE Boom 2 bluetooth speaker as well.

Maybe the devices you've tried were older or cheap models?

The Sony MDR1000X2s can only stay paired to one device, and they're neither old nor cheap. (I was aware of this when I bought them, they noise cancel better than the QC35s for voice.)

It could be, but e.g. Apple has implemented their own bluetooth chip that makes stuff like pairing easier. While super convenient, it shows that the wireless headphone market will probably be somewhat divided, while headphones used to be universal.

It works only if you use each peripheral with a single device, and never switch. For example, I have a decent over-the-ears Bluetooth headset. I like to use it with my work laptop, to listen to music, with my home computer, for VoIP, and with my phone, for making phone calls. Re-pairing takes ten minutes of restarting headphones, reconnecting on the computer/phone, and repeating until the stars align and the devices recognize each other. For a wired connection, I would unplug from one device and plug into the other.

If Bluetooth pairing could be easy, then it might be a replacement for wired connections. Until then, it is a highly situational protocol.