Earlier spec versions aren't just incredibly complex - they're contradictory.

That's what led to so many manufacturers doing their own thing in very slightly incompatible ways. You can pick up two certified bluetooth devices and find them to have different behaviour in the exact same circumstances. In fact, some of the best devices are ones that aren't certified, because they ignore the spec and act more reasonable than it demands.

Apple famously skips several of the mandatory verification handshakes to reduce latency in their AirPods. Not optional, mandatory. Because the spec doesn't work that well in the real world.

Granted, Apple is not alone here since both Google and Microsoft really botched their Bluetooth stacks on their OSs. Especially Google who hasn't learned you can't treat your C driver/embedded SW like front-end JS code.

If they're connected to my android phone while also connected to any other device (dual connection is a feature they tout), they play a tick sound every minute like a terrible metronome.

I'm incredibly sympathetic to Apple deciding everything about bluetooth is hot garbage and building an alternative for audio.

Edit: Here's a post that explains the issue better than I can. https://www.reddit.com/r/sony/comments/fqf71z/wh1000xm3_can_...

I've had better luck in all operating systems with a stand-alone USB bluetooth audio dongle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B089PYFLBN

It's not perfect, but the combination of "you can select the codec" and "the bluetooth stack is 100% out of the hands of the OS" gave me dramatically better results on almost every headset I tried.

What makes complex tech components like Bluetooth any different?

Also, Bluetooth isn't a single product made by a single company that dictates the standard and has the golden implementation.

To have Bluetooth audio between your phone and you PC for example, you can have different Bluetooth chips on each device, each with its own different firmware, then the OS on your PC and phone has a different driver and stack that interfaces to the Bluetooth chip and then there's the antenna design which links the two Bluetooth chips via the air. All these pieces need to come together in perfect harmony for you to enjoy seamless audio between two device.

If any of the manufacturers fucked up the antenna design, or the firmware on the chip, or the driver/stack on the OS, then your entire experience can fall apart and testing/debugging these thousands of permutations of various different pieces is nearly impossible. That's why Apple usually goes their own route towards proprietary tech they can fully control over the entire stack.

A hammer will be reliable if the user uses it correctly, which it's possible to do.

With bluetooth I have the most popular, widely sold smartphone and the most popular, widely sold sports watch. They both claim to be compatible. I'm using both precisely as instructed. And sometimes they just.... don't see one another.

This isn't user error.

I miss my Pebble :( Though the Bangle.js and other "just uses bluetooth LE" devices have been essentially perfect connectivity as well. LE seems pretty reliable.

But like I said in the comment above, if the phone/widget manufacturer fucks up the Bluetooth implementation (misuses the hammer) because they cheap out and buy the cheapest no-name Bluetooth chips they can find on the market instead of buying from established companies, and then farm out the FW and antenna design to the cheapest sweatshop in Shenzhen, Bangalore or Eastern Europe since cost cutting and crunch in the consumer hardware industry is rampant and everything gets nickel and dimed to fractions of a cent while being rushed out the door to meet Christmas sales season or some other arbitrary product release deadline, then the phone/widget manufacturer who sold you the device is to blame for the rushed and buggy implementation, not Bluetooth itself.

So to conclude, if your bluetooth phone and watch are buggy, then blame their manufacturers for improper Bluetooth implementation and validation and ask for fixes/replacements/refunds, as a correct Bluetooth implementation is possible to do if you hire skilled engineers ($$$) and give them time to perform validation tests (more $$$), but instead, most of the widget manufacturers(including car companies) cheap out, like I said before, and cut dozens of corners to get their product out the door quickly and cheaply so they can skim more of the profits.

I hope it's clear now.

Source: Former FW engineer for Bluetooth widgets

Android is on its like 3rd bluetooth stack now? Gabeldorsche, since the meme is rewriting in rust. Every device can support a different number of codecs, everything works on the fallback (or should) but the high definition codecs are a crapshoot.

I remember getting the first gen iphone SE and having a radar open with Apple as all bluetooth audio sounded like it was playing through tin foil speakers, they did fix it but here was the original thread on it: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7521352

I have Samsung S22 ultra and Sennheiser momentum 2 buds. Pairing works 100% anywhere immediately with aptx (unfortunately they don't support HD variant of codecs). But if I do press play, first 1-2 seconds the music is some ugly skipping. I would rather prefer it to be quiet for longer.

But I can also walk halfway across my house and bluetooth doesn't drop until just about the time I reach my refrigerator, so I may have an exceptionally low noise floor where I live.

I once printed out the BT5 spec (just the core), for Ss and Gs (on my employer's dime).

I had a stack of 3-inch (large) 3-ring binders on my desk, reaching 2ft high (0.6m).

It was well over 2,000 pages. It would have been five times that, if I had printed out the various profiles, and whatnot.

BT is crazy. The difference between "Classic" and BLE is frustrating.

I suspect that soon, all BT devices will be cribbing from the BLE playbook. It is a lot more usable than BR/EDR, but the data rate sucks. I think that changes to that, are on the horizon.

I've never dealt with Bluetooth myself, but once heard/read that a company could follow that spec perfectly and their device wouldn't work with large swaths of devices. The claim was that companies implement something that's Bluetooth adjacent but there are some non-conformances that everybody "just does" to make it work the majority of the time.

I'm curious if your (and others) experience align with this?

Apple is probably the biggest offender, when it comes to custom implementations, but BT explicitly allows vendors to do custom implementations, so they aren't actually breaking any rules.

Bluetooth headsets and computers seems like a special kind of flaky-hell. I tried ~8 modern high-end headsets on 4 laptops (2 windows and 2 macs, both pairs ~3-4 years apart age wise) while trying to pick one, and NONE of the headsets connected to every laptop without issues. EVERY headset had periodic audio drops at least after a couple minutes with at least 2 machines, if not all 4, and many had much more severe issues (disconnects, disconnects that wouldn't reconnect, not connecting at all, etc).

^ All of those headsets connected fine to two different phones, and used the codecs I'd expect... usually anyway. Good enough for the most part, and only 2 had periodic audio drops.

Since you seem to know the field somewhat, what the heck is going on with computer bluetooth audio stacks? Are phones just buying all the good chips and bluetooth-OS-integrating-engineers?

However, I was surprised by how little lag the mouse had compared to its regular wireless (Logitech unifying).

Every headset I've used with SBC selected has worked perfectly, including some ancient cheap ones, and I'm pretty sure that's how things are connecting to my car (which always works).

---

For mice, I dunno. I've had consistently good results, and I primarily use logitechs. My wife recently swapped out an ancient one that worked perfectly with a AA that lasted 3+ months for a modern one that... also works perfectly with an AA that lasts for 1-3 months. Similar results for keyboards, I primarily use a chonky wired one and I can't feel any difference when I use bluetooth ones.

If I did feel lag, it'd be an weird and I'd probably immediately return it. So I do tend to stick with one for a long time, and haven't tried many.

I've never done objective latency tests, but they feel fine to me. No noticeable lag compared to wired, which is plenty good for me. RF dongles do at least make pairing a non-issue though, just plug and go (which I LOVE about Apple laptops + keyboard/trackpad, plugging it in sets up the bluetooth pairing).

Regarding the keyboard, I do feel a slight lag compared to wired, but not enough to bother me. The mouse also seems to have a tiny bit more lag compared to its own dongle; however sometimes it seems very laggy for a moment. This never happens with the dongle. I mostly use these in the countryside, in a detached house with not many wireless or microwave devices around, so I don't think it's interference related. The headphones don't skip a beat, either in the same environment or in my apartment building or office in the city, with plenty of wifis, microwaves, wireless mice, phones, etc around.

My biggest complaint is bluetooth gamepads. They simply never work right for me... always registering phantom presses or just none at all. I always have to hold it above my head for it to work right which is unusable.

I also bought a Bose noise cancelling headset 2y ago and I would say it is quite good, I think the only great alternatives in the same price range are from Sony, the Yamaha, Apple ones are much more expensive. Maybe other decent alternatives would be from technics or sennheiser?

But this is my opinion on Bose in general and not this specific product range. Personally I cant stand Bluetooth audio for anything else but background noise. I'm still amazed how a 192kbs mp3 can sound better with 5 euro earplugs compared to a 200+ euro Bluetooth headset with aptX support.

Eventually it doesn't matter at all, if you are happy with their product(s) and consider it money well spend, then who am I to judge.

Edit:

amiga-workbench 51 minutes ago

The most grating "feature" of Bluetooth is having headphones that support fancy AAC/AptX codecs, but as soon as you want to make use of its microphone it dumps the connection right back to A2DP.

I'm no longer amazed.

The bluetooth controller may well be the most expensive part of the headset.