I used the Bluetooth Audio in my new car for about two weeks.

It was actually pretty reliable, and felt like the future. I'd get in, turn the car on, my phone would pair itself and pick up where it left off, and I never once had to take it or my keys out of my pocket. Then I started to actually listen to my music.

The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune. I'm a musician, so I can definitely hear this and it's infuriating. VLC on Windows had the same problem for years and everyone told me I was crazy, but the car was at least twice as bad. It sounded like an old cassette player, if anyone remembers those. Googling reveals this to be a common issue with many different varieties of bluetooth speaker. I can only imagine it's doing some sort of time stretching to "hide" latency in the packets but, well, it's not hiding it well enough for my ears. Trying to listen to anything melodic, especially piano pieces, was just awful.

Fortunately, I discovered that my car also has a shockingly excellent USB Audio implementation, so I copied the Music from my phone onto a large USB drive and have been happy ever since. More wires for me please, the future isn't ready.

There's an assortment of codecs that can be used by the Bluetooth A2DP stack, the protocol is extensible but the only required codec is SBC. Apple supports AAC and Samsung backs APTX so that doesn't help. You usually end up with the lowest common denominator.

I've tried out a number of in-car bluetooth setups over the years and I've found that the quality varies pretty significantly between both auto makers and aftermarket units. Ford and Toyota are pretty solid where as Chrysler and Honda are pretty awful. As far as aftermarket solutions go, GROM is decent and USA SPEC is horrid steaming crap.

Another unfortunate occurrence I encountered was that Android paired with certain systems (Honda) will prefer to stream audio over the HSP/HFP stacks instead of A2DP or will switch when a call is incoming and stick. This is tons of fun because HSP/HFP use very low quality codecs meant tuned for voice applications.

Now that Bluetooth is high bandwidth, I would like to see them add a new audio streaming stack that just accepted PCM/FLAC/AAC/MP3/OGG in all their glory.

Your phone may already be able to do it on its own: get an OTG adapter for your phone (usually MicroUSB male to USB A female) and plug a USB cable in and use your phone directly.

Alas, my phone is running a newer version of Android, and does the Media Protocol thing instead of doing Mass Storage. I usually don't expect to be able to access its files in a sane manner over USB; it's hit or miss.

Instead, I use Syncthing, so my files are synced properly between the phone and my computer using my wireless network, no cables needed. I just copy the same folder to my USB drive periodically and don't need to mess with it beyond that. (In a pinch, I suppose I could use the OTG cable to update the USB drive using my phone.) I like being able to have the drive plugged into the car at all times, as it's one less thing to fiddle with when getting in and out.

If I'm going to plug a wire into my phone for my car, I'd much rather just use the standard AUX (3.5mm headphone jack) port that's built in, as it's simpler and more reliable. I still do this from time to time if I feel like using Youtube, Google Play, or another streaming based service, or if I need to hear something on my phone (like Navigation).

>The audio over bluetooth was frequently out of tune.

I agree. I have a Ford, and the interface is as good as any I've experienced with respect to Bluetooth enabled vehicles. But there's a definite drop in "sound quality" compared to USB based devices or CDs. I only ever use it when we're bored of what we've brought and want to stream Google Play.

You need bluetooth with AptX audio codec support. Most phones have it, but most cars don't (because cars are lagging with technology). I'm using separate bluetooth dongle powered from the lighter socket and plugged into car RCA port and my music sounds good now.

I'm so glad this is the top comment, and matches my experience 100%. If a product brags about its Bluetooth support, I immediately start losing trust in it. So many devices have such bad UX for pairing too, so I can't even get any communication about what I'm doing wrong. I think BT-enabled cars are the worst offender here. Some of them don't even provide obvious alternatives to the voice menu.

The only positive bluetooth experience I've had lately was playing the mobile game Spaceteam. Why is a 6-year-old free app the only example that comes to mind? My 1st-gen Pebble is still okay-ish; it does frequently disconnect but it usually manages to reconnect without intervention or disrupting itself.

(This rant bookends nicely into talking about how shitty smart TVs are too, but I'll try to restrain myself.)

> If a product brags about its Bluetooth support, I immediately start losing trust in it

Unfortunately, there aren't viable wireless connectivity alternatives for commercial products other than Wi-Fi for long range and Bluetooth for short range. And both suffer from high (and rising) interference levels in the ISM bands.

Wifi direct had the potential to be a Bluetooth alternative, but they skipped out on defining "profiles" for common use cases.

With Bluetooth you have a list of profiles that define protocols for various use cases.

A car head unit is likely using A2DP and AVRCP to handle the streaming and playback controls respectively. It may also implement HFP to allow it to act as a handsfree.

Wifi direct do not even, last i checked, have a defined protocol for transferring files between devices. This while Bluetooth supports OBEX, that allows you to either push individual files, or browse the storage of a device remotely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles

Thats the list of Bluetooth profiles at present.

My first generation (non-Time, non-Steel) Pebble has refused to connect to my iPhone 6S since the day I got the new phone. Pebble doesn't seem able to help, the official answer I got was "use the old app" which won't pair to a watch with the Time firmware that their app upgraded mine to. Pairs just fine with my iPhone 5S that I use for work.

The damn thing has been sitting on my desk for months and I don't even know where the charger went. You'd think if your whole hardware experience is based around Bluetooth, you'd be able to iron out the rough edges.

Doesn't Spaceteam use Wifi, rather than Bluetooth?

Spaceteam can do either, but Wi-Fi is cross platform. IIRC Bluetooth was too locked down to support across iOS/Android.

In my experience, after my Bluetooth devices are paired, they seem to be rock solid. (I know - YMMV, "works on my machine", etc.)

Where things have gotten the messiest for me is when you connect multiple devices and the system has to make arbitrary decisions - e.g. when my wife and I are both in the car, whose phone should the car sync with? These are design decisions for which there is no exact answer.

Logitech has a lovely solution for that on one of their more recent keyboards. A big fat knob that you rotate to pick between pairings.

https://secure.logitech.com/en-us/product/multi-device-keybo...

That's not my experience at all. My Magic keyboard and mouse work fine. I've used them with my Mac mini and my Macbook without any problems. They paired without any trouble. Pairing my phone with my car was a pain, but I've got an after-market Bluetooth adapter so you have to press the 3 button on the radio or something to pair the first time. After that it just worked.

That's weird, I have a Pebble and the bluetooth is absolutely solid, even across my house.

I've never had a good experience with desktops and bluetooth devices however.

I wonder why drivers are so much better on mobile?

I've had similar experiences to OPs with older Bluetooth mice and keyboards, so I was reluctant to try the Logitech MX Master. The only reason I did was because it offered the optional Unifying receiver. Well, I haven't used that receiver yet, because the Bluetooth was very easy to pair, and I haven't had a single connection issue (delay or otherwise) yet. This thing has restored my faith in Bluetooth devices, when done right.

Good to see not just Apple users and with that may be as many chipsets out there that some work better with others as is the case of any communications device and that said. Like to like chipsets would generaly be betetr, which is what you would expect from Apple, though again they diversify on chips so again moots that you have verbatim chipsets in part.

Me I've been lucky, though not a heavy BT user, so that may be the crux. This and then you have other things like wifi and interference from many things that could curtail signal

But for a keyboard right next to a device I would expect that to be less of an issue.

So with drivers and chipset variations, and quick google shows, can be some fun and games. But true of any digital communication device, will always be not perfect.

But in general I wonder if those who have had issues, have seen them get worse over time with BT or better? I know people who have had issues and a later driver fixes that issue, even instability ones outlined.

I have similar experiences. Bluetooth headphones on the phone have never been an issue, but the same devices become unreliable when paired with a PC.

Funny enough, my Bluetooth headphones (LG Tone something or other) has been rock solid, the only Bluetooth device I can reliably trust. My mouse, my keyboard, my Pebble, my literally everything else Bluetooth, all have failed me. My Bluetooth headset is the only thing I've never had a problem with on mobile or desktop.

My bluetooth mouse, my android wear watch, and my wireless headphones all work fine with my computer, and phone. So I share the same thing as you were I see no issues with bluetooth. Even my car does bluetooth without any problems. It sounds like OP is experiencing driver issues rather than specific device issues.

I used to be in this camp. My Jawbone Big Jambox would never pair, never stay connected, the whole deal. But I then replaced it with a Marshall bluetooth speaker and it's just a dream. It connects immediately, on the first try, every time. It never disconnects. If it hasn't received audio in a while, it goes to sleep. Press the "wake" button and it immediately connects again.

I used to loathe bluetooth, but now I'm wondering if it's shoddy implementations that are to blame?

I'm convinced shoddy implementations are to blame. I have two examples, both anecdote. First, watches. I've had every Pebble since I pledged the original Kickstarter. I've hooked various Pebble's to various iPhones. The connection to this day is flakey as hell. If I feel the watch buzz, indicating that I've walked away from my phone, there's a 50% chance that I'll be doing the Bluetooth Pairing Watuzi Dance to get it to pair again. Such is the way of things, eh?

Except the Garmin Fenix I bought a month ago has been rock...m'f'ing...solid. I walk away from phone, watch buzzes, walk back, watch buzzes and says it's connected again. Every time. I pull up the Garmin app, it's always connected. In a month of heavy usage, it has NEVER failed to reconnect or stay connected to the phone. Always get my notifications. Couldn't begin to say what the difference is, but someone appears to be doing it right and someone else: meh, not so much.

I don't know what others are doing wrong, but I basically reimplemented Apple's Core Bluetooth for a hardware piece that allowed old iPhones (4 or less, IIRC) to pretend they had BTLE, and consequentially pretend they supported Core Bluetooth. We tested heavily, never had issues, sold it to users, and I don't recall support issues with connectivity (I'm sure someone had an issue, but not enough that it was ever brought to our attention). I believe the devices sold like dog poop sandwiches, but it was for a company large enough that they probably sold more of their devices than Pebble has sold, so I would think we'd have heard about it if there were issues. But if I did anything "right", I couldn't tell you what it was, as I just followed the specs as best I could.

In summary, it would appear that it's possible to get devices to reliably connect and stay connected, but I don't know what the secret is.

The Amazon Echo is kinda the same way. I paired to my phone once, and rarely use, so I often have to go to the Bluetooth settings on my iPhone and tap the Echo to connect, but every time I do, it works flawlessly.

Just an aside: if you have Full Keyboard Access turned on (in System Preferences, Keyboard, Shortcuts) then the Bluetooth prefpane is fairly usable with just the keyboard. You can use Spotlight to open it, then tab between the controls and activate them with the space bar. You can toggle it on and off this way, and even remove devices. You may also be able to navigate the Bluetooth Setup Assistant to re-pair, but I didn't take it that far.

If you prefer wires, the new trackpad will work as a wired device as well if you just leave it plugged in. For some incomprehensible reason, Apple placed the Lightning port on the bottom of the new mouse so that one can't be used wired, but they weren't so catastrophically stupid with the trackpad.

I can also recommend Shortcat (https://shortcatapp.com) for these and other cases!

I couldn't agree more. I have never used a Bluetooth device that didn't have connection issues at least daily. And that's not even taking into account the madness of pairing a device with multiple other devices (e.g. phone & PC) or the fact that you can't use USB and Bluetooth at the same time, because USB3 jams the 2.4GHz frequency. If USB and Bluetooth are going to be mutually exclusive, I know which one I'm going to pick. (But that doesn't mean that making USB3 jam 2.4GHz WiFi & BT wasn't an idiotic design choice, so much so that I wonder if it wasn't an intentional attempt at killing competition.)

Do you mean wireless USB3 (is that a thing?), or that the USB3 copper cables leak that much interference?

Apparently USB3 host implementations cause problem in some early first generation products that also internally implement Wifi and BT.

As in, they are not internally shielding the two from each other. This is largely a problem on Apple products due to their "creative" way of designing hardware internally, but not limited to Apple only.

The latter. I'm not sure if it's the cables or the circuitry in the devices, but most of my USB3 devices emit enough 2.4GHz noise when plugged in to prevent Bluetooth or WiFi from working with at least a few feet from the device. (5GHz WiFi is unaffected, of course)

I'm pretty sure the crappyness you're experiencing is software related.

I've got a lot of tech, bt stuff everywhere and the ones that work the best have the best switching software.

one of the most solid pieces of bt management software is in the Samsung necklace headphones.

these things flawlessly switch between devices, rarely ever skip much less drop a signal.

they're now about 30 bucks, crappy physical design makes them too uncomfortable sadly.

compare with a set of headphones with supposed latency software built in, avantree makes a set of these headphones.

avantree couldn't code themselves out of a wet paper bag, so they ruined a perfectly great pair of headphones because they hired some random company who doesn't know bt programming and so those headphones are great for about 15 minutes and then memory leak or something and they start sucking like all the other bt devices with crappy software.

IMO bt sucks because people can't code and there isn't a OSS client software bt solution that fixes it, so far. and getting Samsung to hook it up with their headphone code base is probably not gonna happen.

I can't up vote you enough. I don't even want Bluetooth to improve anymore. I have given them enough time and energy as well as money for them to improve. All Bluetooth SIG provided was disappointment, frustration, one after another.

I want something to completely replace it. Hopefully coming from WiFi 802.11. Sadly I am not aware of anything coming.

Good point! I've been having similar experiences pairing my phone (6s) with my dad's brand new Honda CRV. Takes a minute of sitting and pressing buttons after every stop to get it to resume the pairing. The car is equipped with a computer that auto steers within the lane but still can't get this to work instantly

I ran into connection problems with any Bluetooth devices I have used.Currently I have fitbit which has all sorts of connectivity and syncing issues with Bluetooth both with windows phone and android. Previously I had Nokia Bluetooth headset which dropped connections from time to time again with Android or windows phones I tested.Before that I had an expensive Bluetooth wireless mouse from Microsoft which had issues with multiple laptops I tested.It cant be driver issues every time.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I would have never known Bluetooth was anything less than a dream. I've apparently been very fortunate.

While I definitely still have issues with Bluetooth keyboards and mice, I have three pairs of bluetooth headphones (two of which are BT4, one is BT3) and they work great.

The only real problem is switching between devices is still much more annoying than it should be (I ought to be able to just select the device from the drop-down on the desired device).

That's like saying that we can improve office communication by having everyone yell louder so everyone else can hear them.

My understanding is that the anonymous broadcasting has been boosted, which may enable more interesting types of device handshaking abilities. It is not merely that the bandwidth has improved, as in the past.

> Still hard to pair, still unreliable.

Except every other BT device around you, just not yours.

I use a pair of Presonus bluetooth speakers daily, and have for months. There's never been a bluetooth problem. Maybe you've got bad firmware or something?

I think the issue at hand, is these devices should be able to be treated mostly as appliances... you wouldn't put up with your TV tuner just randomly dropping, requiring you to turn it off and on again... or your oven suddenly switching to clean mode while you're cooking a chicken.

It comes down to standards compliance and quality control issues.

Yes 1000x. I always prefer proprietary wireless devices over Bluetooth since it's been such crap since inception. My first taste of Bluetooth was with a Nokia 6600 and a Sony Ericsson HBH-660 more than a decade ago. It dropped the connection all the time, the caller ID didn't work, the audio would be choppy, etc. This was in 2004 or 2005. The headset didn't work with any other future phone I had, even though it was "compliant" with this "standard".

These days, I have a DualShock 4 controller which Windows 7 and 10 don't like, using 4 different Bluetooth radios. It also won't pair with my FireTV, though this is possibly a purposeful limitation because Amazon wants to sell me their controller.

Speaking of that FireTV, the Bluetooth remote doesn't work the majority of the time, and eats a pair of Energizer lithium AAAs about every 3 weeks. It's nice that it's not IR, and I usually just use the Fire remote app instead of the physical remote, but it annoys me to no end that we've replaced something which was simple and reliable with something which is complex and wonky; same problem with touchscreen everything in cars and everywhere these days, but that's a rant for another time.

I have a nice pair of Logitech Ultimate Ears UE9000 headphones which have audio glitches every 1-60 seconds when connected to my PC. This makes gaming on them basically impossible. The range for a good connection is about 6'. I usually just plug them in, negating why I bought wireless headphones.

My Automatic OBD dongle works well -- except for the super unreliable Bluetooth connection, which pairs about 80% of the time anywhere between 5 seconds after I start my car to 10 minutes into a drive. Trying to get it into the actual "connected" mode where it can work (poorly, at a slow and highly variable update rate) with Harry's Lap Timer is an exercise in frustration, killing the iOS app multiple times, trying to re-pair it, toggling Bluetooth, etc.

My Suunto Ambit 3 watch works unreliably with Bluetooth, and the messaging "smart"watch feature is so annoying to use that I just turn it off and sync it manually with a laptop. Bluetooth again here. Their proprietary fitness band (which can also do Bluetooth) works fine with the watch.

A Polar fitness band did so poorly with pairing that I replaced it with the Suunto belt mentioned above for use with the watch. Pairing to my phone would work about half the time. These fitness bands are also annoying since they have no status light to indicate power or Bluetooth connection state; you just have to get it wet so it conducts and hope it's on and that the battery isn't flat.

In my car I have a Pioneer aftermarket radio with Bluetooth. It doesn't support a profile which lets me play audio, only hands-free phone call mode. The USB connection mis-pairs with my iPhone about half the time. The Bluetooth feature for syncing the phone book is worthless.

I also have some Jaybird Bluebuds X Bluetooth headphones. These mostly work fine, and switch connections better than almost any other BT device I've owned. The audio does drop occasionally, but they're pretty good for listening to directions on a motorcycle.

By far the BT device I've been most pleased with has been the Logitech Megaboom speaker. It never drops connection and switches pairing flawlessly between multiple phones and a PC. The only problem I can think of is that many phones don't account for a Bluetooth device which may be in range which you don't wish to immediately attempt to pair with, so they'll "steal" the Megaboom from a good connection whenever they have some audio (like an unlocking the phone sound) to play.

On the proprietary side, we have an XBone Elite controller with an expensive dongle which works perfectly, aside from the Windows store requiring about 4 hours of tinkering with registry settings and "repair" tools to get it to download the controller settings program from MS. The latency is great and it never drops out.

I have a few Logitech Unifying RX-compatible devices. They all work flawlessly. By comparison, a Logitech BT backlit keyboard I have loses pairing, doesn't connect, etc with various PCs, phones, and the FireTV.

Bluetooth is infuriating and has been for over a decade. I really hope that they address the pairing and reliability issues, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.