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Andy Edser, hardware writer

This month I’m testing: Custom (or customizable) keebs and some great sounding headphones. It’s a shame there’s only Bluetooth; though it reminds me of why Bluetooth still isn’t good enough, so there’s always that.

Once you go wireless, you really don’t want to go back. While my life often consists of tangling and untangling cables for all the hardware I test, when it comes to my personal devices, I use wireless wherever I can find it. Of course it’s not the keyboard. This is ridiculous. But for the rest? Wireless is the way of the future.

Convenient RF 2.4GHz wireless, i.e. Not Bluetooth. Unfortunately, Bluetooth has become the default connection protocol for many devices, and my house is full of them. And almost all of them have given me a headache at some point.

Listen to this story and see if you recognize your own experience at any point: You unbox your brand new Bluetooth device. You take it out of its packaging and roll it in your hands; You are satisfied that the last product you purchased is stylish, high quality and most importantly wireless. This is the future you were promised as a child.

You can even plug it in for the first time after shelving it to check if it has any battery left and find that you probably have enough to get started. Life is beautiful. You have a new gadget and you can’t wait to test it.

You turn on Bluetooth devices on your phone or PC. You press “Pairing” and do the same on your new equipment. Blue lights start flashing. You’re just minutes away from tech nirvana.

So why don’t influential things talk to each other? You grind your teeth. You press pairing again on both devices, this time simultaneously, hoping that might help. Not. Your neighbors’ Bluetooth speaker, bird feeder, and various erotic toys begin to appear in your list of possible connections. Your new device does not do this. Welcome to the Bluetooth equivalent of Purgatory, my friends. You may be here for a while.

You try a third time. Still nothing. You howl in pain. Your vision begins to distort around the edges. Why do I have to do this dance over and over again every time… ah, I just got hooked. Nevermind.

If you’re lucky, this will be the end of your troubles. But as some Bluetooth advocates will tell you, pairing a device is not a simple step in the process. From this point on, some Bluetooth devices will appear to move on their own; This, in my opinion, is a ruse to gain your trust.

I have one Anker Soundcore Motion+ Bluetooth speaker. It’s an excellent device that can deliver really heavy sound on the go. I keep this mostly in the kitchen because my wife and I like to listen to playlists or podcasts while we cook. Sometimes my partner chooses the voice, sometimes I protest so loudly that he leaves it to me because I’m a nightmare to live like that. The two different phones then exchange Bluetooth connections.

For reasons I can’t explain, he seems to prefer iPhones. So his tawdry Apple device shuts down my paired connection at every opportunity, sometimes from other rooms in the house where it would normally struggle to connect, even if it’s supposedly “forgotten”. Disabling the Bluetooth connection on his phone causes the speaker to intermittently connect to mine unless we both forget and I pair from scratch, and sometimes it won’t let it pair again with either device.

Sometimes it steals the Bluetooth headset’s connection in the middle of listening. Sometimes the headphones in question will play the connection through the speaker. Sometimes none of them pair with any of our devices.

I would write this off as dodgy Bluetooth receivers on both speakers And headphones or perhaps our phones themselves, but sometimes all these devices act on their own and work in complete synergy. Sometimes for weeks.

Again, a ruse for false confidence. He’ll wait until we’ve both had stressful days at work, then make us do the Bluetooth re-pairing dance while we burn the onions. The fact that I haven’t thrown it out the kitchen window yet is only a testament to my hateful, seething desire to keep things running the way they should.

This is not the only example. I have a pair Asus ROG Cetra True Wireless I wore my headphones to test them and made the mistake of trying to use them on the train after picking them up from the office. I pressed the pairing button and observed the bright blue light. Pairing is enabled on my phone.

Suddenly, I was greeted with the pulsing voice of Mr. James Blunt through the headphones in my hand. A terrible shock, I’m sure you’ll agree, and one that wasn’t created by my playlist. I’d rather eat a James Blunt album than listen to it.

I looked at the car with shame. A middle-aged woman sitting a few seats away, looking out the window, was stamping her feet and swaying slowly to the meowing caterpillars of the music. Yes, while he was using his own Bluetooth headset, I had somehow paired my headset with his phone without his knowledge.

I know this woman’s name is Jennie. How did you ask? Since my headphones now call themselves “Jennie’s ROG CETRA TWS SN” and even after pairing them with my own phone, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to change it.

I’ve tried forgetting them, resetting them, going through the settings menus, so many times. Jennie has no idea that she has a pair of Asus wireless gaming headphones, but I have them in my hand. You’re welcome, Jenster. Come and collect them whenever you want.

Speaking of games, let’s talk without delay. Bluetooth has been iterated multiple times now, with some newer versions promising better latency. It’s true that modern Bluetooth headsets and headsets have much less latency than previous models.

Still there Still, as someone who can’t undo once I notice poorly synced audio, it’s a pain. Here are some mitigation tools that can make the situation better; for example, deliberately desynchronizing YouTube videos to backup the video with audio. But for gaming? It’s still not great.

I reviewed this month Heavy H1H headphonesOffering only wired and Bluetooth connectivity options. These are a Bluetooth 5.1 box set and are not a bad experience when used with a 5.3 receiver. But with Bluetooth being its poor gaming cousin, a proper, dedicated dongle-based RF connection is still the way to go.

Bluetooth mice, game controllers, etc. As for? No, not if a regular RF connection is not an available option. They’re fine for casual work, but when things get competitive, I’d rather have the solid reliability and indifferent latency of a decent 2.4GHz connection.

There’s a new version on the horizon and that’s bluetooth 6. Promising better monitoring, more reliable and accurate connection matching, fewer redundant connection attempts, and lower latency, this solution looks like it could solve all my problems, at least on paper.

But I’m sure it won’t be like that. My life is doomed to be forever cursed by broken, slow and annoying Bluetooth devices, and the universe is inherently too unfair to release me from my torment that easily. Damn you, Bluetooth connectivity standard. We are doomed to fight forever.