WH-1000xm3 bluetooth keeps disconnecting

[camonro82]

I bought these in November 2018 and they were working fine until mid january when the bluetooth started suddenly disconnecting for no reason. This began about 20 minutes into listening and would reconnect after about 15-20 seconds then drop again after less than 10 minutes. After three or four times it didn't reconnect so I checked the player, Astell&kern AK70, and it showed that it was still connected. Trying to disconnect didn't work and just hung the player meaning a reboot was necessary. On restarting I was able to reconnect and had another 20 minutes of music before a disconnection again. This time when the automatic reconnect failed i just switched off bluetooth on the player and restarted and reconnected to the xm3s that way. But, there have been times when it has been necessary to switch the headphones off and on to get a connection.

Note, the player is never more than 2 feet away from the headphones when this is happening, the power can be full or low and it makes no difference. 

In order to rule out a problem with the player I have used it with my Bose QC35s (V1) and a pair of JBL in-ears with no issues. I haven't as yet tried the XM3s with another device though.

I had been looking for a solution and possible firmware update but reading the issues with the latest one I have my doubts.

In relation to the threads about the reduction in the efficiency of the noise "cancelling" - this should be noise reduction, not cancelling - whilst it was good to begin with the quality has degraded over the time i have used the headphones. I can hear conversations when no music is playing or during quiet passages, train announcements are intrusive and airline announcements can be heard over music unless i go to ear damaging volumes. I had expected this problem of degradation to have been addressed as i had the same issue with Sony headphones about 10 years ago, less than six months into using them the noise reduction started to decline to a point where it was non-existent (became a moot point as the headband broke and they went in the bin)

Seems that the XM3s aren't the 5 star product that they first appear to be

[Pond13]

I'm really surprised to see the lack of knowledge and tech response regarding this subject!

Where is sony's tech support?

In my experience - firstly the headphones worked just fine.It connected well, both windows and iphone. Then, after reinstalling my windows - all types of problem has been occuring; connection dropping, sound dropping (constantly) and so on. But, since my flatmate is techsupport for a major coorporation, I learn some of the basics.

   Along with problems with the headphones other aspects included are 1) not being able to use night light in fullscreen aps 2) bad wifi connection

Usually these things to him are fixed by factory resetting the computer, since some of the intrinsict settings cannot be reset in other ways. And before doing anything else, updating all the drivers for the computer. This is best done through the official support of the computer.

Say you have an Asus and a certain model. Search the model and brand name + drivers. This should help. Get all the drivers.

Unfortunately, resetting the computer from scratch can be a small hassle. Like, first you need an USB or CD (including a CD reading on your computer) with installation files for the operating system. And then going through a process of pressing a set of keys upon starting up (for windows, and don't remember which ones, perhaps F2) in order to get into the reset.

And from there it is pretty straight forward. But it takes some time, and some effort, since it will also take some time to get into the driver installations.

Another friend also stressed the importance, if using a windows computer, to cancel the automatic windows update through the Device manager or some BIOS command in order to make a fresh clean slate install of the recommended drivers for the computer before Windows take the ship completely. I think this is since they can sometimes end up conflicting with each other.

I was searching for responses in order to see if there was any good answers in order to bypass the problem without having to go through all this tedious work. But the lack of response was breathtaking.

A couple of things that I've done so far in order to make it better (without the factory reset) has been:
1) Go to the brand of computer, and looking up the model number of my computer and search for drivers. This gave me an automatic updater which looks into my drivers and updates automatically. Voila, my bluetooth driver was off.

 .. Since the problem was not completely solved (went from not being able to connect, to losing connection constantly) I ran a windows troubleshooting of the bluetooth. And voila, it was fixable.

So to long didn't read;
  Different options for
1) Factory reset, pause windows update, install recommended drivers through official portals and then starting windows update again in order to install all the necessary windows stuff

Factory reset also goes for computers from apple.
2)  If not factory reset, look into drivers for your computer from official sources. Make sure you have the latest ones. Sometimes it can also be an idea to uninstall the current drivers before reinstalling the new ones.

3) Use the built in programs for troubleshooting as a last resort. It can fix some stuff, but not always (in my experience).

This is focused for Bluetooth, but is a quite general rule I think.

Best of luck

[camonro82]

Sorry Pond13 but that is the least useful post I have seen. What are you talking about with windows? The problem here is the bluetooth on the headphones, it has nothing whatsoever to do with any operating system. 

The simple reality is that the bluetooth fails after a short time with ALL devices. both my phones, samsung and huawei, my laptop which is windows based and my astell and kern media player. 

Sony say that if the device isn't on their list of compatible devices they don't give a damn if you can't connect.

Factory resetting every device to attempt to fix a problem with the headphones is not sensible at all

[jfens93]

I think I  had a similar problem where the headphones would connect and then less than 30 seconds later would disconnect. The headphones would connect to my laptop though and another phone. My partners Bose headphones would also connect to my iPhone X with no problems. I found the problem to be the Sony Headphones app. I deleted the app and re-setup the headphones and they connected and stayed connected. I then reinstalled the app and it works fine now. Best of luck 

[camonro82]

This isn’t a solution to my problem, the issue is with the bluetooth on the headphones. My Astell & Kern doesn’t use the sony app. Sony have suggested that it is an incompatibility with my player, or to put it another way, the WH-1000mx3s are not good enough to use with A&K players.

The problem is really poor quality bluetooth devices.

[JKennea]

I resolved this issue by installing the latest update and turning off "Automatic Power Off"  through the app under system settings.

[camonro82]

I use a music player, Astell & Kern AK70, it doesn't use apps. 

Sony customer service claim it is a compatibility issue,  it appears that the headphone's bluetooth isn't good enough to support quality media players. 

[Prestonsprings]

Is speak to chat enabled in the ap? This was my problem I would start singing to a tune and they would cut out :).

[Barrylaver1947]

Thanks for the advice but I don’t normally sing because I am mostly on the train, I think actually that is the problem, the headphones don’t like the train!

Sent from my iPhone

[chadrenando]

Just a note on a similar problem with the XM4s and Bluetooth compatibility.

I hopped on Sony Chat to ask this same question. I am then told that WH-1000MX4 headphones are not supported on Windows 11 and to wait for Microsoft to support the headphones.  Given the WH-1000MX4 came out in 2020, Windows 11 was released in 2021 and we are now halfway through 2023, I doubt there will be any change.

However, this prompted me to search on Win 11 and WH-1000MX4 compatibility, as it never dawned on me that headphones and the OS would not be compatible with products released in the past 3 years.   

A post pointed me to the Intel Bluetooth / wireless drivers, which will not be caught in the Windows automatic updates.  I installed the new drivers yesterday and have not had an issue with dropout since, fingers crossed.

Just FYI for anyone else scratching their heads.