Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This was an offensively premature product launch. I was excited by the product description and pre-ordered, anxiously awaiting delivery of a product that looked to be an improvement in every way on the AirPods I have been resisting purchased. (I don’t want to be another zombie walking around with white sticks dangling from their ears). Unfortunately, it seems clear the launch date was set, not by product designers’ realistic projection of when the product would actually be ready, but management’s decision that they had to get out in front of the AirPod Pro launch. The result really should be a franchise-threatening debacle, although I’m sure Amazon will not notice a blip. As many others have noted, calling this product glitch-prone doesn’t touch the surface. There is a design defect so glaringly obvious and debilitating that there is no way Amazon did not know about it well in advance: The charging case wells are too small to accommodate the “wingtips” that are so cleverly designed to create a tight fit in the ear that also seals well enough to produce (together with the Bose technology) astonishingly effective noise reduction. The knock-on effects of this screw-up kill the product: With wingtips on (and nobody could seriously suggest they should be removed) the buds fail to connect to the charger at least 25% of the time, no matter how much one pushes and squeezes the case. There is no indication that contact has failed, so you don’t realize it until one bud runs out of battery — very quickly — and for some reason this means the buds and case all lose connection to the phone. Until that happens, you have another problem: the buds, which you thought were safely dormant in your case, are actually still connected to your phone so it won’t ring out loud, or if it does and you answer nobody will hear anything because the buds are taking the call. How do you reconnect? A good question, given that Amazon has provided essentially NO documentation or troubleshooting advice. There is a button on the case and an led light that turns different colors and occasionally flashes, but nowhere can I find any explanation of what they do/mean. Only now are message boards filling up with suggestions. Generally, the procedure consists of recharging the bud then randomly pushing buttons and reinserting buds until something miraculously happens. Obviously Amazon knows about this, and knew before the launch. It seems clear what happened. When they tested prototype cases nobody thought to put on the wingtips, and they seemed to work fine. So they ordered production of a few million cases, and only when they came off the line did someone inevitably realize the issue. But when they raised it management said “Too late, no time to fix before we launch, and we’ve already spent $$$ on millions of cases so let’s just get them out and let the customers figure out how to deal with it.” When connected, the buds are pretty good and have the promise of being great once the software issues are worked out. There doesn’t seem to be any way to connect to a tablet, or to connect to two devices. Maybe there is a way, but again see the lack of documentation. The most significant issue has to do with the way Alexa works. This is a potentially terrific feature but poorly explained (really not at all) and confusing. When you tell Alexa to, e.g., play something from Audible, she is not playing from your phone but through her Audible skill. Among other things, this means you will always depend on an active connection (watch out if you’re paying for data) even if you have downloaded the media — whether Audible, music, podcast, etc. Another minor but stupid design defect, which I mention on the off chance anyone at Amazon is paying attention: The eartip sizing test, which is very neat, doesn’t work for geezers like me who have set their iPhones on Larger Text — the play button is placed so far down on a screen of blank space that it cannot be pressed to start the test. Took me forever to figure that out. I could go on but you get the point — and by YOU I hope I am talking to Amazon. Amazon, if you are listening, you need to fix this cynical and offensive screwup and make things right with the early adopters.