The FR 645 seems to have huge issues with using Airpods and music. Would love any comments on whether these issues transfer over to the new pluses. I love my Airpods, and it would be an issue for me if the pluses don't work well with Airpods.
I’m sitting here now listening to AirPods on a Fenix 5 plus and it’s ... not great. Breakup and stuttering. Hopefully something that can be resolved. Seems to work much better with a pair of Jabra moves I have.
Unfortunately after a bit longer usage I can confirm that the experience is not great. I went running today and I've experienced short "cracks" quite often. I could stand them while listening to an audiobook but it was quite annoying.
An update from me. I went for a 90 ish min run in a forest today and the AirPod experience went from ‘not great’ to ‘okish’. ‘Good enough’ (almost). I expect the lack of environment EM interference might have helped. Perhaps three episodes of breakup and one total ‘stoped playing any music at all until I paused and restarted it’. I expect AirPod owners are used to flawless behaviour, and my experience of them with the F5+ is far from flawless - other headphones definitely work better. However AirPods are _close_to_ good enough based on my very limited testing. A little more work from the vendors and they could be upgraded to ‘fine’ :-)
And another update: I’ve used my AirPods with my Fenix 5+ a few more times in various places including parks, towpaths, city streets and forests and they’re actually OK. Perhaps a glitch or breif drop out once every 15 mins or so but quite usable. Perhaps there was a radio firmware update recently rolled into a F5+ update. In any case AirPods and F5+ qualify as ‘good enough’ now by my reckoning.
I got my fenix 5s plus today, but it's unusable with my AirPods. The music plays without problem when I hold the watch in front of my face. Once I lower my arm there are breakups and cracking. When I hold the watch behind my back there's no more music at all. Any chance this will be fixed soon? Otherwise they are getting the watch back.
I have used mine three times now. I get the occasional drop out but nothing major. Its good enough for me as I'm running not concentrating on music. I wear it on my left arm if that helps.
As a long time Apple Watch user who's finally converted over the Garmin I can say the Airpods work average as others are saying with occasionaly dropouts. What I also notice is a particularly low volume coming from the Airpods. The headphones that I'm finding quite good right now are the Jaybird RUN's. Great volume, with little to no dropout. And they're $20 off at Best Buy this week!
I had a phone call with Garmin support today. He basically told me they tested bluetooth compatibilty with 4 (in words: four!!) bluetooth headphones and they can guarantee that these models are working. Other models can or cannot work. There were so many bluetooth protocols and they can't test them all. :confused: Well, that means my fenix will go back.
How many bluetooth headphones would be acceptable for them to test with? There are easily 1000s of options, and while the claim that they can't test them all is not very empathetic, it is indeed true. Apple makes quite the marketing claims about their W1 chip and their custom integrated bluetooth stack.These headphones work quite less well with android phones or other non-apple, non-w1 bluetooth enabled devices. My guess is that the Fenix isn't alone in having connectivity problems to the air pods. The best bet would be to have a good look at the headphone reports in the 645 forum as they have a pretty extensive list going at the moment. My sincere hope is that the Jaybird Run headphones i have will work well with the watch, but if for some reason they don't i doubt it will be the Fenix's fault. They sometimes cut out as it is when my Galaxy S8+ is stored in the back of my flipbelt instead of the front. They clearly struggle to maintain a signal with other sources.
