MARQ series bluetooth performance (music)

Very puzzling.

No dropouts for me whether in an activity, starting an activity, or just in watch mode. I am using old LG bluetooth headphones.

Works perfectly.

That's super strange. I even got my Expedition exchanged under warranty. 

Outside of faster discovery of sensors I'm not seeing any Bluetooth improvements :S

No problems with Airpods, works perfectly here as well. (Athlete)

I wonder what else could be causing this constant underwhelming performance. 

It cannot be the watch as it got exchanged. It can't be the case that I have seven defective pairs of earbuds. It also can't be my phone as things don't work when the phone isn't connected either.... 

Nick, 

in activity do you always have a foot pod present? I remember seeing that you have a stryd. 

I have been corresponding with the software team a bit as i think the foot pod appears to negatively impact Bluetooth performance when running outside. I didn't notice this until i recently retired my treadmill specific shoes and moved the foot pod to my normal road shoes (freedom ISO). The performance of my Elite Active 65t and my Jaybird Run headphones has suffered. When i'm wearing my other shoes (Kinvara, Speedgoat, or Peregrine) I do not notice such poor performance. 

I think the footpod might be causing issues.  

Thanks for the suggestion but nope, I haven't done much running over the past week- mostly cycling or just navigating from A to B with the watch. No other sensors connected.

I even tried disconnecting my mobile phone to see if that does the trick but nothing works. 

Thanks for the info. I have had pretty great performance (better than my 5x plus) until i tossed the footpod into the mix. It is odd because inside i can leave my MARQ on my desk and walk rooms away and it is just fine. Outside in activity it is somewhat less great, but with the foot pod it isn't an occasional hiccup, but rather a whole bunch of them while running. 

No, thank you. I am giving up testing this for Garmin after spending nearly £500 on bluetooth earphones...I am certainly not giving up on wanting to have a working product (especially one that cost me £1600);

I am at a loss as to what could be causing this (provided that issues persist when no sensors are connected)- especially given that there are no problems at all when not performing an activity (even with my Android device connected to the watch);

I have sent Garmin a detailed email with my findings, let's see what they suggest..

I remember having bluetooth problems with my fenix 5x+ in an earlier software rev where it would cut out intermittently for the first 6 minutes (until the "performance condition" had showed up) and after that it was stable. Have you tested if it gets any better after a while?

I haven't had the patience to, to be fair. The longest I lasted for was 5 minutes- it's that bad.