Anyone else feel the bluetooth reception is weak?

Framework Laptop
#1

My keyboard and mouse work fine, but sitting right in front of the laptop, my Sony WH-1000XM4 (not old, not cheap, not junk) headphones constantly lose connection. If I turn my head 30 degrees left to look at my left external monitor, it cuts out totally and stays out until I turn my head forward again. It’s essentially unusable for headphones, which is kind of ridiculous sitting right in front of it.

The same headphones, in the same environment at the same desk etc, with my X1 Carbon 5th (2017) I had to go 2 rooms away before they disconnected, and it didn’t matter what direction I was facing.

The wifi antenna cables are on the right colors. (black cable to black triangle)

I have a bt keyboard and mouse and they haven’t had any problems. Mouse never stutters or anything.

#2

Maybe try to update your bluetooth driver just to make sure. I don’t own a framework laptop yet but from what i can see is the wifi and Bluetooth antenna is inside the plastic hinges. This makes sense since the aluminum chassis absorbs a lot of the wireless signal, so it needs to be inside a exposed plastic part. Still amount of aluminum of the chassis might cause the signal to be weakened a bit in comparisson to other devices. Maybe others who own a framework laptop can test the bluetooth distance on their laptop

#3

I had the same issue and it ended up my antenna cable wasn’t fully connected. It was in place but not completely snapped in. My fault of course as I have a DIY edition.

3 Likes
#4

I’ll double-check the antennas. I mean, you gotta believe I didn’t go as far as posting about it without being pretty sure but, you never know and the symptoms fit.

3 Likes
#5

You might have other devices connected to your headphones automatically. Try turning off other bluetooth devices that recently connected to headphones. Then test the headphones again. See if it gets better.

#6

One thing that might also help is to disable the audio transmission of the microphone so you have more bandwidth for music. Sony WH-1000XM4 are ANC headphones so they probably have a user usable microphone inside them.

#7

Welp I don’t know why or what changed, but I no longer have any problem. I can not only turn my head 30 degrees left, I can walk the same distance away into another room before it cuts out, as I can with my X1 Carbon 5th.

I didn’t change anything, and the cables were connected right when I looked, but just for the sake of complete info, here’s everything I can say that has any possible bearing:

I’m running xubuntu 21.04 and the latest mainline kernel (5.14.9 for the last few days) (I actually maintain the mainline updater app forked from ukuu), and I rebooted several times as a side effect of looking at the cables and rearranging my desktop cables and stuff for a new laptop stand. Honestly I think it was the reboot. Just a random fluke software/hardware initialization glitch or something, the kind of thing that happens once in a while at any time on any machine. I never had any of the reported linux problems with bluetooth not working or resuming from warm start or the right-click thing. This version of xubuntu and the mainline kernels must both be just new enough to have all those things fixed. Everything just worked out of the box (though I haven’t tried to use the fingerprint or webcam yet)

I looked at the antenna cables. They were good, but I re-seated them anyway. The act of disconnecting them is part opf how I know they were good to begin with, because of how it feels when the come off. And when connecting, I connect cables like that by removing the card and connecting the cable to the card in the air between my fingers, so you can feel the cable connector snap into place flat parallel with the card with no guessing at all. Then just take a little care while moving the card into place. Plus you can rotate the cable a little to verify it swivels in-plane and is still snapped on. Also took some magnified pics of the connectors to see they weren’t mashed or something, and looked at the rest of the cables to see they weren’t pinched or gouged near the hinge or under the bezel. All good.

Although I re-seated the antenna connectors and now I have no problem, I also ate a ham sandwich and now I have no problem. I think it was actually just a fluke and the full power off reboot cleared it.

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#8

My MX Anywhere 2s mouse is lagging as well when connecting via Bluetooth, I think I have updated the Bluetooth driver.

#9

I’ve noticed with my Bluetooth headphones that reception on my Framework isn’t as strong as it is with my phone or tablet. I can walk maybe 2-3 meters farther away before it starts glitching when it’s connected to my phone.
But the Bluetooth is a lot stronger on the Framework than it is on my work laptop, an HP Elitebook.

#10

“Using the AX210 with Linux on the Framework Laptop” may be relevant.

#11

No reception issues here. In fact, I turned my Soundcore Spirit Pro on just now and they reconnected to my Framework which is 60+ linear feet, 3 walls and a floor away.

No issues with my Sony XM3s either.

If it “fixed itself”, I wonder if there was some other source of interference going on at that point?

#12

I have the same problem with XM3s. I bought the diy edition thinking I could get a cheaper wifi card somewhere else but eventually I just bought the Ax210 from amazon for a similar price. Possibly unrelated, I don’t know if it really is the same card but I have had trouble getting the antennas to stay seated in the card socket. I have made sure the antenna was plugged in and it did the same thing. I hope that if op ever figured out what he/she did they let us know.

#13

As far as I can tell, nothing. It was either just a software fluke cleared by rebooting, or it was just re-seating the connectors.

I don’t have a problem with them falling off, so I guess I’d look at the connectors with magnification to make sure they’re not mashed.

#14

Update: I saw the wifi signal was weak right next to my router so I opened up the laptop and reseated the antenna. After that my Bluetooth has been working fine. So far the antenna wires have been the biggest annoyance with my framework. To get the connector to stay for long periods of time I need to wrangle the wires outside of the rubber holders. I think they might be too long, or I have them bent in a weird way or something. Ultimately this has been the biggest hassel with my laptop and while this is much much better than my old laptop it’s been really frustrating.
TLDR: double check that the antenna wires are seated correctly, they are a pain and may slightly disconnect inside the laptop.