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Bluetooth Earphone Sound Quality

I recently bought a Vivoactive 4S so that I could listen to music on my runs, without taking my phone with me. I own a pair of Taotronics BH076(?) bluetooth earphones which have served me well over the years, and paired fine with plenty of different devices. 

However, when using them with my Garmin, whether it's using Deezer or the music loaded onto the watch - the sound quality is awful - it's full of crackling and popping, like an old vinyl record. It's as if the earphones are a long way from the watch - or there is some interference. This happens whether I'm in the house or out and about and the earphone's bluetooth receiver is on the same side as the watch. 

I asked Garmin, and they basically told me to buy way more expensive earphones. I would, but I just spent a whole load of money on a smart-watch. Plus, my earphones work fine with every other device I use. 

Anyone got any ideas what's causing the issue, or how I could go about fixing it? (I've updated all the firmware, etc. and the watch itself is more or less on factory settings).

  • I've got a cheap earphones (Amazon Umi) and the quality sound is the same than the smartwatch

  • I had this issue a while back. Before connecting the headphones I had to turn the Bluetooth off on my phone. Then it worked perfectly. 

  • Thanks. I have tried that a few times, but I'll try again. 

  • It may be because the earphones try to connect to the phone first. You have to turn the bluetooth off before you connect to watch or unlink it from the phone. 

  • Thanks. I *have* tried that, but I might try totally unpairing it from the phone and deleting the cache, so it's forgotten completely. I use them with phone a lot, too, so it'll be a bit frustrating if I have to do that every time, but I'll try. Everything else about the watch is really impressive. I want to love it, but this is really testing my patience! 

  • Update: Deleted the headphones from my phone. Deleted the Bluetooth cache. Switched theBthe phone's off. Factory reset the headphones. Switched watch off and back on again.

    Same issue :-/ 

    I've got the earphones back on charge in case it's just that they're running low on power. I'm fairly certain they're *not*, but there's not much else I can think of. 

  • Just bought these watches and I have same problem too. Tried many different  bluetooth headphones and sound quality of bluetooth is really poor. Like you are listening it with bitrate 64kbps or even less. So it is not acceptable for me. Going to return these watches.