I seem to be hard to be hard things, because they don’t last. I used to use Bose overear headphones for my dog walks every morning, but after a year or so they stopped working with a microphone even with a change of cable.
For Christmas last year I was given a pear of Apple Beats Powerbeats3 Wireless headphones. I didn’t want the Apple Airpods, because I don’t trust that they won’t individually fall our or I will immediately lose one. The Beats seem like a much better idea because of the cord in between them and that they wrap around your ears.
Overall I have been mostly happy with them. The battery life is very good, the sounds is good, and after trying out all the earpieces I found ones that mostly stay in my ears, though I am constantly pushing them on more.
For me the major problem is the connection to my iPhone 6. I take my dogs for walks every morning, Indiana Bones for 45 minutes and JK for 30 minutes. And even with my phone and headphones fully charged, and my phone in a case on my hip I lose connection constantly. Mostly it just stops playing, and I can use the inline remote to start playing again, but about once a day it completely disconnects and I either have to wait for it to reconnect or go into bluetooth and force a reconnect. As I said I can usually start again quickly, but not always and sometimes I have to pull my phone out to get them to play again. And this is a real pain when I am being pulled by Indy and especially when I am also carrying a full dog poop bag as well. I just want them to not stop! Not only that the problem has been getting much worse. At first it was happening maybe twice a walk, but now it can happen up to 10 times a walk!
Also the microphone does not seem great. Partially I think it is because it on the cord that wraps back around your neck, so it is behind your mouth so has to be powerful and so it picks up a huge amount of wind noise. My mom is constantly complaining about the sound quality.
The range in my house is pretty good, especially if I have my iPhone in the middle of the house, it reaches pretty far, but can’t make it outside, or through too many walls for sure.
I have tried resetting my PowerBeats3 and have restarted my phone, but the stopping persists, especially when I am out and walking (seems to work better in my house). I contacted support and they are sending me a case and will check them out, and if they find a problem they will send me a like new pair, and if they don’t they will charge me for the inspection, even though it is still on warranty.
And maybe the issue is my iPhone, but I will find out. Just can’t stand the constantly stopping.
I do love not having the cord to my phone, especially when walking the dogs, and I really like the wire behind my neck to keep them safer, though it could be a little longer in my opinion. They are great when they are working, but when stopping all the time they are frustrating.
I bet they work much better on an iPhone 7 with the custom bluetooth hardware. And maybe it is interference from also having an apple watch? I just don’t know!
I will update once I hear from apple.