I'm struggling here. I'm about to send back my Bose NC700's, exercising their 90-day trial period. They are so close - functionality-wise they do what I want. But they have a horrible to the point of being unuseable UI, and their programming is flaky enough that about 2/10 times that I try to use them, it takes a couple minutes just to get them to do their basic job.
This is all I want:
- Good noise cancelling (the basic function)
- * "reverse noise cancellation" for calls (i.e. cancels my background noise for you if I'm on a call with you).
* The "reverse noise cancellation" is the problematic feature - most don't have this, and AFAICT, there is no standard term for it. So, it seems to be impossible to search or filter for it. In fact, even the NC700 does not distinguish it as a feature. I had to do a side-by-side parsing of the descriptions of this with their QC35 Gaming headset; originally I misinterpreted the QC35 as having the feature too. It turns out it just has noise blocking for the mic - all passive.
Here are the anti-requirements that the Bose has added to my list (this is also a rant, so stop/skim if this is getting too long - but there might be a good laugh in there
:- does not auto-switch to another device, i.e. when I'm using them on a zoom call and somebody calls my phone, does not take me off the zoom call
- does give me explicit simple and immediate direct control over which is the currently active device. For example single-press one button to cycle to the next connected device. The NC700 has no control for this, the instructions say "To switch between active devices, pause audio on one device and then start audio on the other device." For phone calls, there is no "pause" or "start" audio control,
- does not use touch controls/gestures that are likely to happen by mistake, or don't work if I'm wearing gloves
- basic functions actually work all the time. Frequently the Bose doesn't auto-connect to devices it is already paired with, it goes directly into BT pairing mode. Telling the devices to connect to it doesn't work. I have to either power-cycle the headset or clear and re-pair my devices.
- does not require an app to use it's features. Many of the Bose features are only accessible through a phone app. Frequently the app doesn't recognize the headset and I need to delete and repair it, which takes minutes. Furthermore, this requires the phone to be actively connected to the headset, which means I can't disconnect the phone to prevent calls from taking over the headset when I'm using it with Zoom on my computer. This is funny - you need to use the app to tell the headset to disconnect from your phone. But then once disconnected, the app can no longer control the headset, so you need to power-cycle the headset to actually use it for a phone call. It's a bit slow after somebody has already called me.
One thing I will admit that I could try, that would solve about 3/4 of these problems, is to stop using Bluetooth entirely. I could clear the paired device list, and only use the wire. That would prohibit me from accessing the app-only features, but the ability to disconnect BT devices is the only one of those that I really need regularly.
