[vel0city]

I can stay seated on the couch and connect my phone to my stereo. It turns on the receiver and changes the input to Bluetooth upon connection. From there I can then play anything and control the volume on the stereo from my phone. All without needing to even get up from the couch, or potentially even needing to go into the room with the receiver.

The receiver has good Bluetooth range. I can change the output to the speakers by the pool (albiet through the receiver app or from the receiver's remote or its face buttons) and take my phone pool-side. Then I can change the music (and the volume, once again) from my phone through just Bluetooth.

Both of these are experiences where Bluetooth is better than a 3.5mm jack.

[asdff]

I guess that depends on how smooth your blutooth interfacing is. For bluetooth speaker's I've had , pairing means holding a button on the physical speaker and waiting for the phone to show up because for reasons the old connection listed on my iphone no longer works. This happens with my mac and a blutooth mouse too. sometimes I can't connect to it right away, I need to go through the discovery and pairing process again. the system in the car is junk too. It connects and starts playback automatically, but you have to manually press play on the car's stereo head unit to start getting sound from the device versus just the title and time info on the car's headunit screen.

I'm glad this system works for you but for most things I've had the pleasure of using blutooth with, it's been awkward and clunky and slow compared to just grabbing a plug and shoving it into a hole and getting sound immediately, so I prefer the tried and true cable methods whenever possible. Nice that they are so much cheaper too. You'd probably get better sound for your money buying a vintage stereo than a modern one with bt shoehorned in.

[vel0city]

> You'd probably get better sound for your money buying a vintage stereo than a modern one with bt shoehorned in.

Eh, I like having it be able to get the digital audio for my home theater setup and handle features like Dolby TrueHD/Atmos and DTS MasterAudio and eARC directly on the receiver instead of having dozens of discrete devices with dozens of analog connections in a cramped case. It's a higher end Onkyo unit, it seems to perform pretty well. I like a lot of the features such as having multiple zones as well.

The other aspect with having it cabled is then my phone is literally physically tethered to my stereo. I can't take it around with me in the house while it's playing music. I can't read things on it or reply to messages or emails without having to stand by the stereo.

Sure, I do sacrifice some slight audio quality using Bluetooth. But to me it's more than made up for by the extreme flexibility of wireless connectivity. And for my pool example, I'm in a noisy outdoor environment driving a couple of all weather speakers pretty hard. I'm not going for extreme high fidelity in that environment.

I've got a Logitech MX Anywhere mouse that can do three profiles of either Bluetooth or Unifying. I have one profile for my work laptop, one profile for my personal laptop, and one profile for my phone, all Bluetooth. I've never had a profile get broken.

I also use a Kensington Expert Wireless mouse and mostly use the Bluetooth connectivity to my work laptop. I've changed the batteries maybe twice in the several years of ownership. It has always just automatically paired when I get in to the office and starts working right away. I've never had to re-do a pairing on it.

On my gaming PC I use Bluetooth gamepads and VR wands. I did have a driver issue after upgrading to Windows 11 which the only resolution I could figure out was a fresh install. After that I haven't run into any other issues with that device.

All my computers use Intel WiFi/Bluetooth chips. They definitely seem to be some of the best quality.

I've had crappy Bluetooth speakers before. They behaved like you've said, where they just seem to forget their pairing or become unreliable over time. I've also had good Bluetooth speakers and headphones that are very good at remembering what they were last paired to and seem to connect almost instantly.

These days even my car key is Bluetooth. I use a Phone as a Key setup, so walking up to my car with my phone authenticates me. Getting in to my car with my phone allows it to be started. All this happens with Bluetooth. I rarely bother taking a key fob with me when I leave.