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by tpmoney 1386 days ago
Are you using multiple devices with each bluetooth product, or are you using multiple bluetooth products with a single device? In my experience the latter is mostly the same across Apple and non-apple. Where Apple's experience seems to be noticeably better is using an apple bluetooth product with multiple devices.

For example, I recently tried to switch from some airpods to a pair of Anker liberty earbuds. I have 4 devices that I regularly use the headset with, an iPhone, an iPad a macbook air and a work laptop. The airpods switch almost without any effort on my part between my personal devices, connecting automatically to whichever of the devices I am currently interacting with when I take them out. On the occasions when that doesn't happen, selecting them from the bluetooth menu connects them without issue. For my work laptop, because it's not registered with my personal accounts, the airpods don't connect automatically but after pairing them once during the initial setup, when I select them in the menu, they connect reliably and quickly.

By contrast the anker earbuds apparently are only able to store connection information for two devices at a time. While I can pair them to all 4 devices, when I take them out, they will always connect to whatever the last device they were connected to, and if I connect from the bluetooth menu/settings on the device, they will only connect to the second to last device they were connected to. For the other devices, they will attempt to connect and eventually timeout. Even though the device still has the earbuds registered, the only way to connect it to device 3 or 4 is to delete it from the device, and go through the entire re-pairing process, at which point the earbuds will stop connecting to what is now the 3rd to last device they were connected to.

1 comments

That's odd. I have a pair of airpods pro shared with an m1 mbp, and an iphone. The airpods seem to randomly connect to 1 of the 2 devices, almost never the one I want them to connect to. This is the same experience I've had with other BT devices.

The only good BT experience I've had is my Bose QC35ii headphones, which can connect to multiple devices at the same time.

Seems kind of limited and you have to use the “Bose app” for complete functionality. Are there apps for the Apple Watch? My AppleTV? And I still have to pair them to each device and they only switch between the “two most recent devices”.