We live in a world where a product you buy could become something else a little while later. Car manufacturers have started holding off hardware features, like remote start, to be activated later with a subscription. Video games like Cyberpunk 2077 or No Man’s Sky may have released with missing features and bugs, but became amazing games years later thanks to updates. Not all updates are good. Many iPhone users were upset when an update slowed down their devices, in what some dubbed with a silly “-gate” suffix, “Batterygate.”
Sometimes, an update becomes a problem. That happened for me with my Bang & Olufsen Beoplay EX headphones. When I first got them, I was excited about the superb sound quality. There were some issues with Bluetooth, but they weren’t overly serious. However, after a few updates, they became my most love/hate product. I love the sound of these headphones, I’ve come to hate everything else. Bang & Olufsen updates made them unreliable, and subsequent updates never fixed those issues, only making them worse with time. Now these headphones are something I would have returned within a week, but I don’t have that choice anymore. Bang & Olufsen waited just long enough to ruin them that I can’t return them.
So here’s a story about how good tech can quickly become horrible.
In This Article:
Why I Bought The Beoplay Ex
This is a story of good tech going bad inside a story about good tech going bad. My AirPods Pro were perfectly suitable for background noise videos while I worked or music on my commute. Music quality is middling for the AirPods Pro, but they have amazing noise cancellation, transparency, and call quality. However, they became unreliable with time. This was more of a hardware issue than a software one. I believe the contacts for charging the AirPods Pro would become worn out, and often not make a complete connection. I’d clean them, but the problem would persist. The issue was those tiny flexible contacts getting worn out and letting my AirPods die in the case. I got so tired of reaching for my AirPods only to find they were dead.
I replaced them with the Master and Dynamic MW08 Sport headphones. However, despite sounding great, having excellent battery life, and being beautifully designed, they had no way of hearing your own voice while on a call. Instead, you’d hear the sound of your voice echoing in your own head, and it was quite distracting. These headphones already had a transparency mode, they just chose not to let you use it for calls. It was an utterly ridiculous software decision that lead to me returning the headphones. I needed all-rounder headphones, and these were useless for calls. I quickly returned them.
So, I settled on my second choice for high-end all-rounder headphones, the Bang & Olufsen Beoplay EX. I loved them… at first. But little headaches became worse with each update, and now they’re a reminder that a company can make a product bad with a software update and then simply abandon it.
What Was Good
The most obvious standout feature of these headphones was the sound quality. It was the best I had heard in truly wireless in-ear headphones. They even beat out the Master and Dynamic MW08 Sport headphones. I was impressed. The noise cancellation was decent, a little better than average, and the transparency mode left a lot to be desired, but was workable. They also had a great “own voice” mode that worked like noise cancellation while on a call, but would pipe in the sound of your own voice. This made sure when you were on a call, you were fully present, not distracted by your surroundings. Finally, the comfort. So many in-ear and truly wireless earbuds are uncomfortable. The AirPods Pro set a gold standard here, and no other product I tested came close until these.
What Wasn’t Ever Good
There were issues from the start though. The battery life was lousy. You practically had to have the case charging at all times, as just three full charges of your headphones would deplete it. Wireless charging was incredibly slow. The case was hard to open, and was quite large for adding so little to the battery life. It’s a lot of empty and wasted space. The touch controls were always terrible. You fix your hair and bump them, and it’ll pause or skip a track, but you actually go to pause or skip a track, and they’re unresponsive. Touch controls are terrible, especially for devices you can’t see when you’re using them. The sync mode was always finicky. I found that when I needed to enter Bluetooth pairing mode, it would take far too long. I’d often have to close the case, wait for them to turn off, then try again. This goes back to those terrible touch controls that don’t always detect your touch, even when you’re squarely on the device.
Bluetooth on these headphones always had issues. From changing the audio source when I picked up a phone call to dropping out as I got distance from my devices. It’s always been a bit of a pain, but it was a small annoyance.
What Went Wrong
But then, things got worse. In the beginning, multipoint worked quite well. I could connect them to six devices, and the last two I connected to would get the connection unless I put them into Bluetooth pairing mode or attempted a connection with another device first. It worked well for multipoint, which is notoriously bad. It’s been so bad that on headphones where multipoint is an option, I usually turn it off. I would if I could with these.
The Beoplay EX force multipoint on you. It has made Bluetooth, the only way to connect your headphones to a device, so unreliable that about a quarter of the time I use them with my phone they don’t work without forcing them to re-sync.
When the only (and last) two devices I connected my headphones to are in range, they don’t always connect. Sometimes I’ll hear the connection twice, but it’ll only be to one device. I frequently have been been about to leave, went to play music, and found that, for no reason, these wouldn’t connect to my iPhone. My iPhone might have been one of the only two devices it could connect to, but for some reason, despite requesting a connection and being next to the headphones, they wouldn’t connect. I’d have to fully restart the Bluetooth pairing process before leaving. I’ve even tried numerous factory resets. Nothing fixed this issue since Bang & Olufsen introduced it.
The case isn’t the only thing worse for wear.
When I’m in a crowd with only one Bluetooth connection active it might be searching among the plethora of other connection possibilities because—again—I can’t turn multipoint off, so it’s causing my music to crackle. A crowded train is enough to ruin my music entirely. This didn’t happen before Bang & Olufsen’s later firmware updates, but now it happens every time I use these headphones in crowded public spaces.
And don’t even get me started on listening to two devices at once. It doesn’t work anymore. If I have a video on my Mac, and am reading a news story that has an ad or auto-play video, it’ll pause or mute my playback on my Mac. It’ll do this even if my audio on my iPhone is muted and the video is muted. If there’s a possibility one device may have audio, it’ll play nothing. Worse, it sometimes requires I completely re-sync my headphones to get it working again.
Range took a nose dive. I used to be able to wander through my apartment. Now I can’t even step more than 20 feet away before it starts to cut out. Lose line of sight and it’s a crackling mess. I don’t know how they managed to make this worse with an update, but range used to be fantastic and, with no changes to my space, I can’t listen to something from the other room while I’m walking around my apartment or doing chores anymore.
Oh, but they did improve wind noise in transparency mode earlier this year. I haven’t noticed much of an improvement, and there’s still plenty of wind noise in transparency mode, but… I mean… at least they tried to provide a new feature once, right?
What’s Next?
Well, I’d have to be the biggest idiot in the world to buy anything from Bang & Olufsen again. Support was unhelpful, B&O hasn’t pushed an update in months, and the firmware is utter trash on these. I’ve lost hope for my formerly favorite headphones ever reclaiming the throne. I hate that I bought these. I thought the sound quality would be great. So what if they don’t have as much experience with Bluetooth and consumer electronics as some other brands? That sound quality!
Not worth it. Not one bit. Damn it, I should have tried the Sennheiser or Sony headphones instead.
I worry that Bang & Olufsen has abandoned these. I feel like they’ve decided that fixing the problem is less expensive than losing those customers. Updates, while broken, used to come every two months. The last update was now six months ago. Meanwhile, I’ve wasted $400 on headphones I would have returned in a week if they worked like this when I bought them, and they’ve been instead broken by updates for about a year. I wish I could convince Bang & Olufsen that a great customer experience is worth spending time on, because if they could fix the Bluetooth issues on these headphones, I’d fall in love with them all over again. Now I can’t wait until I have a good excuse to replace them and never think of Bang & Olufsen again.