Ted Todorov
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2000
- Messages
- 3,713
I have been using Bose headphones for years because they are light & fit my big head/ears most comfortably. However my love for the AirPods & hate for and past Bluetooth I had tried lead me to try out a W1 Bluetooth based Beats headphones. The Beats 3 Solo don’t fit me at all, so I tried the different shaped noise cancelling version of Beats.
W1 based Beats headphones with 24 hour battery life are indeed as highly appealing as one can imagine, sound quality is very good, but unfortunately it was quickly obvious to me they were way to uncomfortable, heavy and just did not fit my head, so back to Apple they went… I should add they had one hard to believe problem - a USB mini or micro (I can never tell the difference) port/cable for charging. It is a horrific experience compared to a Lightning port or USB C port one of which is used for all Apple devices, and for both the cable is randomly flippable. Considering Apple was wise enough to quickly upgrade Beats devices to W1, that they didn’t upgrade them to Lightning or USB-C is puzzling at best.
Since my old Bose headphones had completely fallen apart I was forced back to the Bose store for new ones. They no longer have a cable only headphone version anymore - the choice is Bluetooth with or without noise cancellation. They still do fit similarly to my old ones, so I picked up the the Bose AE2 Soundlink version (no noise cancellation). I started by trying out the latest version of Bluetooth. The good news: it was straightforward, no manual reading or Bose app needed to connect to my devices (iPhone, iPad, AppleTV & MacBookPro). It works very well with my AppleTV - there is one situation where not having to deal with a long cable hooked up to the Receiver is a huge improvement. I was starting to hope that (non-W1) Bluetooth had finally been improved into the tolerable level. Then I hit the brick wall — the first time I tried switching over to the Mac (not counting the initial setup/test) it simply refused to connect, after numerous attempts. The only thing I didn’t attempt was to remove it from all my other devices - I just fished out the cable and plugged it in. Bluetooth is still not ready for prime time… And yes, of course the Bose has the same USB mini or micro plug for charging as the Beats (though here I had no realistic USB-C hope) and a considerable shorter than 24 hours battery.
Basically the only perfect(ish) device out right now are Apple’s AirPods, which of course are not over the ear headphones, and can’t replace them.
W1 based Beats headphones with 24 hour battery life are indeed as highly appealing as one can imagine, sound quality is very good, but unfortunately it was quickly obvious to me they were way to uncomfortable, heavy and just did not fit my head, so back to Apple they went… I should add they had one hard to believe problem - a USB mini or micro (I can never tell the difference) port/cable for charging. It is a horrific experience compared to a Lightning port or USB C port one of which is used for all Apple devices, and for both the cable is randomly flippable. Considering Apple was wise enough to quickly upgrade Beats devices to W1, that they didn’t upgrade them to Lightning or USB-C is puzzling at best.
Since my old Bose headphones had completely fallen apart I was forced back to the Bose store for new ones. They no longer have a cable only headphone version anymore - the choice is Bluetooth with or without noise cancellation. They still do fit similarly to my old ones, so I picked up the the Bose AE2 Soundlink version (no noise cancellation). I started by trying out the latest version of Bluetooth. The good news: it was straightforward, no manual reading or Bose app needed to connect to my devices (iPhone, iPad, AppleTV & MacBookPro). It works very well with my AppleTV - there is one situation where not having to deal with a long cable hooked up to the Receiver is a huge improvement. I was starting to hope that (non-W1) Bluetooth had finally been improved into the tolerable level. Then I hit the brick wall — the first time I tried switching over to the Mac (not counting the initial setup/test) it simply refused to connect, after numerous attempts. The only thing I didn’t attempt was to remove it from all my other devices - I just fished out the cable and plugged it in. Bluetooth is still not ready for prime time… And yes, of course the Bose has the same USB mini or micro plug for charging as the Beats (though here I had no realistic USB-C hope) and a considerable shorter than 24 hours battery.
Basically the only perfect(ish) device out right now are Apple’s AirPods, which of course are not over the ear headphones, and can’t replace them.