I didn’t find that an issue at all, and not sure what you mean about the laptop part I only use the mobile app to upgrade my qc 35s.

I do find the Bose UX to be horrible though for another reason, which is the incredibly stupid “feature” that the headphones can be connected to multiple devices at once. Since I use it both with my phone and laptop and they’re often in range of each other, sometimes the audio control will just switch back to the other device than the one I’m trying to use, I assume because of some background process that’s still open, and I lose my sound. If one device is on the edge of connectivity range, it’ll beep every couple of minutes as it connects and disconnects even though I’m not even using it. Then if I ever want to connect a third device like a tablet, it’s made to switch back and forth between exactly 2 devices not 3 so things get even more messed up.

It’s quite annoying, and I feel like I’m the only one bothered by these issues because I don’t see a lot of other people complaining. But I’ll definitely be switching to a different brand away from Bose when these headphones wear out. Probably the upcoming over ear Apple headphones, since I find airpods to not have any of these issues and generally work great at switching between two devices without being stolen back by the previous device.

I love this feature, but Mac is the bully in this situation. It captures the connection often even when nothing is playing and when Mac is asleep it still tries to connect and probably due to low power mode takes FOREVER for the phone to sync and realize what I actually want is to play audio from my phone not laptop...

I found this project which helps with the later problem: https://github.com/odlp/bluesnooze

Yeah maybe this is another case of walled garden apple stuff where it only works well if you're 100% in their ecosystem. They seem to have very chatty bluetooth headphone code in general, like the airpods are effectively always in pair mode you don't have to hold a button down or anything to get them to start pairing to another device. But the end result is it does work with fewer headaches than my Bose QC35 and is still just as easy to switch between devices. And apparently there are further improvements with that coming in iOS14 too.

I've had these PLT headphones swap from phone to laptop when phone is playing music and laptop makes some noise (email notification, etc.) Whilst it's handy for the rare circumstances I want to start listening on the laptop without stopping the phone, it's a massive pain in the arse the other 99% of the time. Not least because it doesn't automatically switch back and start playing again.

I suspect it's the generic Bluetooth chipsets, mind, rather than anyone in particular because this happens with the PLT headphones and the Taotronics dongle I've got.

Your comment is funny to me because I have a pair of WH-1000XM3 and the one feature I'm missing the most is Bluetooth multi-point pairing. It's super easy to switch devices with the Bose (even though yeah, it can be finicky) meaning you don't have to re-pair your devices every time you want to listen to music on your phone, use them for a Slack call or for a TV show.

Re-pairing takes likes 2 seconds though when it works well, like with the airpods. It's just as fast as multi-point pairing without the downsides.

How? I always have to press the power button for like 8 seconds to re-enter pairing mode, otherwise my second device complains about an error :(

Same for me. You are not alone in thinking the UX is horrible.

I own the Bose QC 35's and I never had to use an app at all until I decided to update them to the latest software

I used to love my Bose QC 35 ii's but now I'm convinced they're kind of a scam.

Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years.

So you aren't really paying $250 for a pair of headphones, you're paying $125 a year to rent them, as they will only last 2 years due to planned obsolescence. This seems to have been a deliberate decision by Bose as the previous model had a removable battery.

> Bose deliberately made the battery enclosure very difficult to open so that you can't replace the battery yourself. Why do you need to replace the battery? Because if you use them every day, the battery degrades so that a full charge only lasts about 1 hour, down from 20+ hours, within just 2 years.

I've used my QC35 II's 6 to 8 hours a day for 5 days a week for 4 years. They last approximately a full week on one charge; they'd die mid Friday if I used them a lot that week or early Monday if I forgot to charge over the weekend. I've had them unplugged and unused since March (work from home) and they still had 60% when I tried them just now.

Okay, that's interesting. I've used mine ~6 hours per day for 5 days a week for 2 years. Why can't mine hold a charge for more than an hour? Maybe there's something I don't understand about how batteries work that I am doing and that I could do differently.

I mostly don't use bluetooth. I keep them wired 95% of the time and noise cancelling just eliminates office noise. The remaining 5% of the time is typically on a flight to somewhere connected to my iPhone a couple of feet away.

>I mostly don't use bluetooth. I keep them wired 95% of the time (...)

IMO this seems like a very big detail that should be included when describing your battery longevity.

I'm using mine for over 3 years over bluetooth, somewhere between 10 and 20 hours in a regular (pre-covid) week, the battery feels like new.

I wish I could justify wired headphones but I'm too much of a dolt, I've chopped the cord too many times and broken more laptops than I would like to admit.

You are not alone.

I use bluetooth 100% of the time and I use them indoors so the temperature shouldnt be too bad.

Could yours be stored or used in extreme heat frequently?

Beyond that, it could just be a battery defect. Devices that last for multiple days should last for several years before seeing that kind of degradation.

Temperature may play a critical role. Do you use them outside in the cold a lot?

This is a interesting point.

Many Big Tech ask their suppliers to use green energy or reduce carbon footprint.

But, their product is not "green" at all. Many of them make battery extremely hard to exchange. It is quite common in laptop and cellphone.

You can’t change the noise canceling settings without the phone app. They also default back to “full” after you power cycle the headset. I wanted to use them with a PC and no ANC but no luck without the clunky phone process.

QC35's have a hardware button on the side of the volume buttons that allow you to change ANC. Not sure which model you're using.

I have the first gen, not the model II’s. It doesn’t have the button on the left side.

Even worse, on my QC35 II's, the hardware button defaulted to Google Assistant on Android, and I had to use the app anyway to set it to modify ANC on press.

At least that’s just a one time setup process.

I'm a buffoon! I meant the QC30's - the in-ear ones. Sorry! It appears mk 2 of QC35 has physical ANC buttons, but the originals do not.

This is actually a positive to using the app.

I have the original QC 35's and they never originally gave us the option to change the ANC. Only through an update and using the app that they switched it on.

If our headphones didn't use can app, we would still be stuck without being able to modify the ANC level.

That finally explains why it has hardware to remember the voiceover setting but not the ANC setting

Its bugs me as well

I think they are referring to the Bose 700 model.

So far Shure hasn’t done anything that dumb, but you have (or rather, had. They seem to have to be coming out with over the ear model) to be ok with tethered headphones.

I kind of like the tether. Harder to lose them under a bookcase. And less of a problem if they plop out during exercise.

But holy crap, the process for updating AirPods without an iPhone is a real hassle.

Took my bank account months to download my an iPhone to update with.

The system requirements for Airpods includes another Mac device like an iPhone.

https://www.apple.com/airpods-2nd-generation/specs/

I don't know about Bose, but you can connect the Sony headphones with the normal bluetooth pairing, there's no app required

I have the Bose Quiet Comfort 35 II. I use them with a MacBook Pro through Bluetooth pairing. I never installed any app and never connected the headphones physically to anything.

What is the OP talking about? And why would anyone install an app to use headphones?

Unfortunately you can't disable noise cancelling without the app.

Well, you can, but you first have to enable that using the app.

Why would someone buy noise cancelling headphones if they don’t need that feature?

The QC II’s bluetooth range is horrible. Less than half of the QC I’s.

>>Why would someone buy noise cancelling headphones if they don’t need that feature?

You don't ALWAYS need/want that feature.

Some reasons:

* Safe battery life

* Hear conversation or important sounds in the background

Most headphones (all I've purchased) have a dedicated hardware button. In fact, all of them have 3 modes: Noise cancelling ON, noise cancelling off (Switch), noise cancelling off + enhanced microphone (quick transient button, to quickly hear e.g. captain announcement etc). Can't imagine having to do that through software, it'd defeat the convenience.

That being said, fully agree; my Sennheiser HD380 with 3.5mm jack have lasted a decade and I don't know when or if I'll ever need to replace them. They sound and feel as good as new.

The expensive Bluetooth headphones and headsets are a disposable commodity with inferior user experience for at least some use cases (Pairing? Latency? Battery? Software? You don't have to worry about those with 3.5mm:). Yet, there's a positive ARMY of people who always join in to defend the removal of 3.5mm jack - even though they gained nothing from it, and some of us lost a lot :-/

huh, my Sennheiser headphones can control the noise cancelling with buttons on the headphones. Some limitations were annoying (2 connected devices at once, it gets very confused by my dual boot machine) but sounds like I dodged a bullet with brands requiring custom apps

They may want to disable that feature occasionally.

I sometimes wear glasses which prevent the headphones from forming a perfect seal. If I walk around with the headphones on, I get a "wow" going on which is quite tiring. Turn the NC off and they're ok. I only rarely do this, so I wouldn't have bought a dedicated pair only for this purpose.

Exactly. If you are disabling noise cancellation on the QC II, you bought the wrong headphones. There are much nicer ones without noise cancellation for less money.

I toggle NC on and off all the time depending on the situation.

Good luck when internal settings get changed (as in internal volume)

I just ran into this very issue. I opted out of downloading anything. It was working fine until just now for whatever reason the volume is so low that I can hear a background hiss. The source laptop volume is maxed out.

If this is Sony's way of forcing me to use their app, they guessed wrong. I just bought these and am considering returning it.

Did you try raising the volume directly on the headphones? If it's a WH-XM1000, you can do that by sliding the finger up on the right earphone.

For some reason mine's volume works as expected on an iphone (phone and headphone control the same volume) but on a pc (windows / mac / linux) the controls work separately...

Thank you, that did it!

long time user of the sony wh-1000xm2. never have had any such issue. i have noticed that it seems like the headset and phone have independent volume controls but both phone and headset have physical controls, no app required.

The Jabra 85h is great in this regard. Totally fine without the app, the app itself has a ton of features and useful items including changes to side tone and auto noise cancellation. The app pulled in a firmware update when I first connected and ran that in a few minutes without me touching anything. I would like to compare my set to the top Bose and Sony sets but at almost double the price of the 85h, I can't bring myself to spend the money.

I have the Sony WH-1000XM3 noise cancelling headphones, didn't have to install an app at all and the noise cancelation on them is absolutely incredible. Along with the amazing sound quality, they're the best headphones I've ever owned.

AirPods also requires to use app for many features but the app is integrated to iOS. IMO It's worse than dedicated app.

The experience on Android is they “just work” as Bluetooth headphones.

My experience with the Bose headphones has been excruciating.

Hmm, I've tried the Sony (WH-1000XM3) and Bose (QC35) headphones at an electronics store and could pair both rather seamlessly with my Android device. NFC helped to make this even easier than pairing AirPods.

Bose looks awful. My Sony also "just work".

I use my airpods with my Android phone. What am I missing out on?

Probably nothing.

They have a feature that’s quite handy to me (the proprietary quick changing from one Apple device to another IFF it has the same Apple ID — so no good for shared hardware like a tv) but “quite handy” is far from invaluable.

You can program a tap on each earbud to do certain things: again, handy but you don’t have that ability I doubt you’d be upset.

Apple’s quite clever on figuring out how much “bleed out” from their own stack works for them (e.g. iPod support for PCs, which open standards to embrace, which not, etc). They are hoping you’ll switch to an iphone next, but even you don’t you are revenue.

If you're not used to it you'd probably not be upset but having an iPhone and Airpods I'd be upset going back.

I switch between my Mac and my iPhone daily so if I had to re-pair to do that that would suck. My guess is many modern alternatives let you pair more than one device at a time which would be another possible solution (better or worse I don't know). Apple's switching sometimes fails for me and when it does it's infuriating since it can end up taking several minutes to fix when all I wanted to do is use the damn headphones.

The tapping is pretty useful too though the features I use (pause/play/skip to next song/backup) are also part of the bluetooth headphone standard so while I can't change them to something else my other bluetooth headphones have the same standard features that I actually use.

This is also one reason I didn't like the Airpod Pro's. Tap is replaced with squeeze. Squeeze requires 2 fingers, Tap works with a knuckle. I can tap with full hands. I can't squeeze it full hands so they effectively downgraded the product with pro.

Well sure, you you may be and I certainly am all-in on the Apple hw train. However the OP says they are an android user.

I guess I forgot to mention “tap for siri” but I’m not sure anyone would miss that much, and I hear android users have a better equivalent.

I switch from my Mac mini to Android phone and back regularly. I don't have to re-pair them.

Bluetooth is supposed to require that but not all implementations do.

Apple has some additional out of band signalling so that if it is paired on one device you don’t have to do any handshaking to switch it to a device it’s never seen before as long as that device uses the same Apple ID.

It’s nice, it reduces friction but as you say it’s a small. Ice to have at best.

Worse in what way?