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Comment by josho | Hacker News Reader

> I can walk about 50-60' while listening to music with no dropouts!

What kind of magic are these things? My bluetooth connection from my phone to headphones or the car will start to drop if too much of my body gets in between the radios.

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I should clarify - that's in the basement with just a few walls and still underground (in an inner-ring suburb). We also don't have a cordless phone, satellite, or other typical 2.4 Ghz devices that cause much interference (besides a few older wifi devices on the 802.11g network).

If you're in a more urban environment, apartment buildings, or have plaster or other types of walls (mine are drywall and studs), you're luck will go down considerably.

Sometime in the past couple of years, Bluetooth turned into magic.

It went from something that had range measured in inches, constant static, incessant pairing headaches.. to something with incredible range, throughput, and connectivity.

I've got a Tivoli Audio bluetooth speaker from about 2009 that's maddening to use. I have to switch bluetooth on and off on my phone, and switch the device on and off about 10 times before I get the dreaded "failed to connect" doesn't pop up, and it actually finds the damn thing.

But now my iPhone's connected to my fitbit and apple watch all day long, can send usably high datarates to the watch (hell, it can even show the live camera viewfinder from my phone on the watch screen!), and has multi-wall-penetrating range. When I hop in my car and flip off my headphones, the music or phone call picks up on my car's audio system almost seamlessly. It's really amazing.

Forgot to add, I recently bought some Outdoor Tech Chips bluetooth speakers for use in my ski helmet. The damn things lost connection with line-of-sight and about 3ft between my head and my phone in the pocket. If I sat down, they dropped. If I turned my head right instead of left, they crackled and stuttered. It felt like 2002 all over again. Returned, replaced with Sena Snowtalk.

After the second paragraph I knew apple will come in :)

Human bodies are actually quite good at blocking Bluetooth. My $15 no-brand BT headphones can handle three walls in between my Nexus tablet and them, but putting it in my back pocket is enough to get dropped packets.

You contain a whole lot of water, and that alone does the job (of messing up the connection).

Water is amazing at blocking RF... and we're composed of a lot of it. If you stand between a Bluetooth device and your Mac when you're monitoring with the Bluetooth Explorer app, you see a pretty marked difference compared to the device having a direct line of sight! Air still insulates, but a few orders of magnitude less than water (thankfully for wireless product manufacturers!).

I have a pair of JLabs BT earbuds and routinely go 30'-40' without any problems. Typically at the gym I leave my phone in my bag and will leave my bag at one station while I superset at another.

Normally I loop the earbud connecting wire in front instead of behind my neck because it gets in the way for squats.

It all really depends on the device hardware and what interference they see.

My iPhone to Subaru OEM radio: Drops out if my I swipe my hand over the phone in my pocket while sitting in the seat.

My iPhone to Pioneer aftermarket radio: I can be walking well into the house before it finally drops off.

Dualshock 4 controller with Bluetooth adapter plugged into the computer: Struggles to stay connected.(Due to motherboard interference.)

Dualshock 4 controller with Bluetooth adapter plugged into an USB hub a few feet away: I can play games I can't even see through floors.

Report the Bluetooth problem at the Subaru service. When my wife drives back from work, our '15 Forester pairs with my phone on the kitchen table as soon as my wife stops the car in front of the house. Easily 15 feet and there's walls and the car's chassis between us.

This is pretty hilarious by the way because if the phone just about pairs and she turns the car off, iPhone keeps playing the music, just switching to the internal speaker. We have a running joke about her "walk-in theme playing".

It is a problem with the 2015+ WRX regular head units and is regularly reported as an issue. The 2015+ Navigation units, plus a few years prior, do not have the issue.

I have a set of Plantronics sports bluetooth headphones, and I can routinely walk 30 or 40 feet away from my iMac or phone and still hear them OK. I can even go to the bathroom which is outside my office are and in another room across a hall and still enjoy music/podcasts.

Physical walls are of course, the major factor in signal loss, rather than pure distance. It seems 2 walls between my headphones and the host are OK, but 3 walls is pushing the friendship a little.

I was having similar behavior with my LG HBS800.. with my AirPods I can go almost anywhere in my house. The LGs would drop out as soon as I went around a wall corner - and sometimes dropped out when walking.

The LGs are the neckband variety, I guess that right on top of a water sack is the wrong place to sit the receiver and out the side of your ear isn't bad.

Yeah, I previously had a different LG headset, and it had major issues depending on my orientation towards my computer; it seems the AirPods are more optimally located on the body for a clear signal, or maybe the antennae are just that much better.

My Jabra Halo Smart can function across the house pretty well as long as the device it's paired with has an adequate raido (see: my iPhone 7+, but not the Intel wireless chipset in my ThinkPad W540).

I'm rather impressed with more recent bluetooth headsets, the range isn't too much worse than my Plantronics DECT headset.

Is that inches or feet? With my bose qc35 I can walk 5 to 10 meters away from my phone/computer. (10 if clear view, 5 if wall)

1.5 meters seems very little and 18 meters seems too much.

At work I can leave my phone in my office and go get a drink from the kitchen without the audio dropping out. It's probably a good 15 meters away with 2 walls in between.

Ditto. I can walk to the restroom and my QC35 don't disconnect. 15+m, 2 walls (all tile bathroom walls) in between. Not so much as a crackle.

I'm jealous. With my QC35 if I walk more than about 10 feet the connection gets very stuttery.

Single quote is feet and double is inches, so 18 meters.

Huh. It's interesting, because I come from a country which uses only metric units, so whether someone writes a single or double quote is reduced to meaning "this weird imperial unit". I definitely wrote 20' and 20" meaning a 20 inch monitor before.

The actual Bluetooth connection is coming from the case, which allows it to have a stronger signal due to a larger antenna and battery.

Nope, that's not how AirPods work. In fact he case has NO Bluetooth capability in it - even reporting its battery state only works if one of the AirPods is in it.

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