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Comment by gfrff | Hacker News Reader

My $400 Bose headphones have worse range than my cheap MPow headphones. Perhaps whatever great thought Bose puts in doesn't result in great products....

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Using a bluetooth audio dongle can significantly extends the range. My Bose would starts stuttering at ~4m range, but after using a bluetooth audio dongle, it basically cover the whole house now (>10m radius).

Or the improved sound quality comes at a cost?

Better connection through research would also be expected, since wireless headphones without connection can't sound great /s

Bose and improved sound quality in one sentence?

Like it or not, we aren't talking hifi and you may not love their specific coloration but the audio quality per form factor and price of bose bluetooth speakers is quite great compared to alternatives. I mean there are certainly better ones obviously but my soundlink revolve and my soundlink micro are much better than the models from other brands they replaced. Reliability however may be a different thing but I have not treated them very kindly to say the least.

I also bought a Bose noise cancelling headset 2y ago and I would say it is quite good, I think the only great alternatives in the same price range are from Sony, the Yamaha, Apple ones are much more expensive. Maybe other decent alternatives would be from technics or sennheiser?

In my opinion Bose performs only slightly better than the cheapest crap and only has a moderately better build quality, yet at a (near) premium price range. I think their products are barely worth half the money they ask for it.

But this is my opinion on Bose in general and not this specific product range. Personally I cant stand Bluetooth audio for anything else but background noise. I'm still amazed how a 192kbs mp3 can sound better with 5 euro earplugs compared to a 200+ euro Bluetooth headset with aptX support.

Eventually it doesn't matter at all, if you are happy with their product(s) and consider it money well spend, then who am I to judge.

Edit:

amiga-workbench 51 minutes ago

The most grating "feature" of Bluetooth is having headphones that support fancy AAC/AptX codecs, but as soon as you want to make use of its microphone it dumps the connection right back to A2DP.

I'm no longer amazed.

We’re also comparing it to cheap MPow. That’s already a bargain brand, I can’t imagine what cheap means in that context.

The bluetooth controller may well be the most expensive part of the headset.

MPow does a surprisingly good job, at least for headsets. Most of this stuff doesn't cost a lot of money, just thoughtful engineering.

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