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I recently bought a pair of Sony h.ear on 2 bluetooth headphones that include a mic intending to use them to replace the wired headphones I currently use with my late 2016 MacBook Pro (the first touch bar model).

What I did not realize is that Bluetooth (at least up through 4.0) bandwidth is so low that it's not possible to use the mic on the headphones and get good quality audio out at the same time (References A, B, C).

Since one of the main uses I had in mind was voice chat while playing Heroes of the Storm with my friends this was rather frustrating to discover.

At least one of the articles I found are from before Bluetooth 5 was released and mention that it may fix the issue due to the increased bandwidth. Does it?

For example I was thinking about returning the Sony headphones and getting the Jabra Elite 85h headphones (which support Bluetooth 5) combined with a USB-C Bluetooth 5 adapter (since my computer does not support Bluetooth 5).

Would that allow me to use the headphones including the mic with reasonable quality?

Giacomo1968
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Redwood
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1 Answers1

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The bluetooth standard has two audio profiles, as @user9310000 commented:

  • A2DP (HiFi stereo, microphone disabled)
  • HFP (mono audio with microphone enabled, originally designed for use in a car)

No newer version will improve upon that; I guess backwards compatibility is the reason. The technology was designed this way.

There are more bluetooth profiles.

user2531336
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