Jabra: We know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops. Sorry, no refunds | Hacker News Reader

Jabra: We know our Bluetooth headsets don’t work with laptops. Sorry, no refunds

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56 pointsingve28 comments

We have a Jabra conference call USB-A dongle thing at work, it very often does not work. Half the time while it is connected to my laptop, the microphone does not work even though the LED status light shows it is not muted. The other half of the time it scans bluetooth and does not respond to physical button presses. When it occasionally does work as intended it is pretty good though.

I had an Evolve 80 headset. It's of the corded kind. The control unit on the cord went crazy whenever I started a meeting over any video conference tool. Support insisted that none of the devices I had supplied enough power for it (500 mA).

I gave up on the headset and passed it along to the next unfortunate soul. After months of being told my devices were at fault and some months of radio silence I got an email stating the firmware bug causing the issues has been fixed.

Long story short it looks like the support is indeed trying to wear you down.

We have multiple Jabra Engage 75 at work and I don't recommend them to anybody. Their software client has to be reinstalled every time we want to open it. It apparently has support for MS Teams but the pickup/hangup doesn't work anymore. It worked for like 3 months and then it suddenly stopped on all computers at the same time. This means we have to run to our computers when we get a Teams call instead of hitting the button on the headset. The mute button works at least.

We also use BlueJeans for communication with another company and it doesn't work for the first 10 seconds because you have to pickup the headset, hang up on the base station, then hold the pickup button for 5 seconds and then have to push the pickup button again for it to work with BlueJeans. Otherwise it's configured in telephone mode. The headset doesn't save this setting and you cannot make it to.

Muting also doesn't work in Blue jeans, but still switches the indicator light, which leads to confusion and we had more than one embarrassing instance of burping while in a conference with the company board.

I was thinking of buying a Jabra headset but now I’m doubting it.

I don’t think support necessarily knew that Bluetooth was not supported on laptops. I think they just follow a flow diagram and pretty late in the stage do they actually research the issue and came to the conclusion you received. I don’t think they sat around laughing at you. I think you are attributing malice to a worker who didn’t act in malice.

I’ve been using AirPods (v2, non-Pro) for tons of video calling all year and they’re great. Especially great with iPhone & MacBook, mostly great with an HP laptop.

(For some reason, once they are a known paired item by the HP laptop, it hijacks them whenever it’s turned on, even if they are in use at the time with another device.)

Talking to my colleagues who are using Airpods (also non-Pro), the quality sounds terrible. Almost like they're talking over a phone line. This is paired to a ~2016 MB Pro though, so perhaps the older BT chipset makes a difference.

It's not the bluetooth chipset that's the determining factor, but rather apple's proprietary W1 chip.

There are a lot of exceptions depending on the device and the BT stack used, but to process both audio input from the mic and output to the headphones, and to provide the low latency needed for a voice call, bluetooth headsets go into SBO "mode" which drops the audio quality down to a tinny 8bit mono.

If airpods (or certain beats headphones the right hardware) connect to a device with the W1 chip, instead of switching to SBO mode, they send a raw AAC stream to be decoded by the W1 chip. It's still compressed but much higher quality than SBO. 2016s don't have a W1, and as far as I am aware no mac does but I don't know that for sure.

BT5 addresses some of this, and there are other proprietary addons to Bluetooth that do similar things, most of them made by qualcomm (aptx, aptx ll, etc)

It's pretty telling that Bluetooth still isn't ready despite Apple dropping the audio jack years ago. The bluetooth standard is just bad. The only way it has a chance of getting fixed is by proprietary addons because that's the only way the committee can't mess it up.

I thought the W1 was only at the headphones-end of things?

I think the headline is a bit hyperbole, I guess it would be more true to write not supported with laptops.

I have the same jabra evolve 75 headset and it works perfectly fine with my work lenovo laptop and my personal HP laptop without the dongle.

Its not allways completely trouble free but it works (at least as well as my beatsx headset witch is the only other BT headset I have).

How did you pair to your computer?

I have an engage 75 and was very frustrated to find that that after dropping $500 on a BT headset, the base had to be plugged into my laptop.

The same way as I pair it with my smartphone. Put it in paring mode using the button (https://www.jabra.com/supportpages/jabra-evolve-75/7599-832-...) and then in windows go to add bluetooth device.

Just to follow up incase anyone reads this. After speaking with Jabra, the Engage 75 headset and stand cannot connect via BT to the computer. The headset cannot connect direct to the computer via wire either.

From the article: "Jabra does not support use of our Bluetooth (BT) headsets connected to native BT in any computer running full operating system (o/s)"

Secure Computing did this once with their firewall. It very clearly stated in their ads and packaging that it would work on a particular version of Windows NT, but people who paid found out the hard way that a future version of the software would work on NT, but the current one didn't yet - they were hoping we'd just wait for a future product patch. No thanks.

My customer got their money back for the firewall, but as a consultant, having recommended it in the first place, and trying to install it only to be told by their own support that there was no way to make it work on the current version of NT until a patch was available, was extremely embarrassing. I've never recommended their products again, since their trap left me looking like an idiot.

One a sidenote: I bought myself the airpods pro shortly before corona started and it has been a heaven for me. I never had such a good experience with any headset including my expensive Jabra headset. I also heard no complains regarding voice quality from anybody on the phone either. They truly made the home office experience a lot better for me. They worked great with MS Teams on my Mac and after a 5 seconds connection delay on Skype too. I usually charge one earpiece when it‘s low on battery and use the other, without any interruption. I do not plan to go back to any other headsets/earphones unless they can provide the same experience.

The author said that public shaming was the only remaining option, along with contacting their executives.

There is also another option: small claims court.

And another: credit card company, and returning to the retailer, depending on the timing.

Anyway, I’m glad they got their money back.

But the credit card and small claims court routes would be dealing with the reseller. Of course the reseller also has the responsibility to sell items meeting their advertised features, but in this case the issue is more with how the actual company's support was acting. Public shaming seems like the correct approach.

Thank you for posting this. I bought a Jabra 510 Bluetooth USB speaker a year ago. Was at first very happy with how it worked with my phone.

Then last month I got a new laptop with one fewer USB port, and only USB C at that. I struggled for hours trying to get the Jabra working on Bluetooth with my laptop, in Win and Linux, and with my partner's Mac. Nothing worked.

So thanks to this post, I got onto Amazon customer service, and arranged to return both our Jabra 510s for a full refund.

Thank you YC.

And Jabra, you are deceptive and untrustworthy. You won't be getting any sales from me ever again, nor from anywhere I influence purchase decisions.

The dongle referenced in this article has broken on three sets of Jabra 75’s I’ve been issued rendering the headset useles for PC use. You cannot just replace the dongle and resync the headset

Purchase at your own peril.

Huh. I've been using a Jabra Evolve 75 (in particular, Jabra Evolve 7599-838-199) with my 2018 MacBook Pro and it works just fine with built-in bluetooth. I can even have it simultaneously connected to iPad and laptop and get audio from both. I wonder what explains the variability in quality.

I have one non-tech friend working as phone support for one big ISP here in EU. It is residential ADSL. When I spoke to him about tcp port filtration, he swears that they did not filter any ports. Ofc ports 135-139,445 was in fact filtered, but even if I try to show him, he still won't believe.

I think you are in the wrong comment section.

> PS: To Jackie and all support representatives in the world. If you lie to customers to protect your cheating company you are not “just doing your job”. No, the bad karma is on you.

What an ignorant view. Sometimes, support represantitives cannot go off script, for fear of losing their job. Perhaps they spoke to their manager and were overruled. A support representative is not responsible for their companies products that they had no part in designing. Given a choice between lying to my face and them losing a job they may desperately need, I would much rather be lied to. If I can afford a $300 luxury item without researching it and checking reviews first, I can afford to be dissapointed.

Yup, wouldn’t hurt if their reps were unionized and could push back against this stuff either.

Another alternative is regulation through the democratic process.

I know that is blasphemy on this board but it is a viable solution.

Jabra has always been problematic connecting to Macs. I also found out Jabra bought Panacast so I’m expecting the cameras to become problematic now in conference rooms.

I have some Jabra headphones that worked on my 2015 Macbook, but when my work upgraded my laptop to a 2019 with OSX Catalina, I couldn't get them to connect. I thought that I was doing something wrong; didn't know they weren't supported.

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