I recently tried out wireless noise-cancelling headphones from both Bose and Sony, and (the important privacy issues aside) the user experience with these apps is just horrible.
You unpack your Bose headphone, eager to use them. But before that, you have to download an app on the iPhone, then download a software update program on your laptop, which in turn opens a program in the browser that downloads an update, then you connect the headphones with a wire to the laptop that the update gets installed, and THEN you can start using them.
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...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
>>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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
You unpack your Bose headphone, eager to use them. But before that, you have to download an app on the iPhone, then download a software update program on your laptop, which in turn opens a program in the browser that downloads an update, then you connect the headphones with a wire to the laptop that the update gets installed, and THEN you can start using them.
I send both back and now I'm a happy AirPod user.