Creative BT-W3

Man, this thing is a life saver. Use case 1: I have a pair of Sony WH-1000XM3 that I like very much; comfortable, great noise cancelling, great audio quality. However, my work laptop running Linux doesn't have good compatibility with Bluetooth audio devices, plus audio quality is very iffy (I suspect low SBC bitpool, but work laptop so fixing involves quite a bit of hacks...). This USB dongle is a simple USB audio interface, and has no trouble with the laptop at all, delivering AptX HD audio to my headphones with zero fuss. A quick double-tap on the button and I have quick HFP for teleconference. Use case 2: the Nintendo Switch doesn't have BT audio, so I have to mess around with a wire, which is inconvenient. This solved that. (To get around the fact that the 1000XM3 doesn't have AptX LL, I got the tiny FiiO BTR1K and a short 3.5mm cord and just attach it with gecko tape to the left side of the Sony. Janky looking, but works extremely well, and no more audio delays in games.) Now is this thing perfect? Not really. Sometimes the dongle would mis-recognize available codecs of a device, but a quick reconnect fixes that. There are some features that I would really appreciate, like pairing with multiple devices at once and switching between them, or making the mic have audio output passthrough so that I can plug some other things into it. But all in all, this is a very neat little decide that works well.

I wanted to use Bluetooth headphones on my Switch, but for some reason I can't imagine, the Switch doesn't support Bluetooth audio. This device does what it says extremely well. You plug the headphone-style dongle into the headphone jack at the top of the Switch, and the bluetooth receiver into the USB port at the bottom. It works great, pairs in seconds and the sound quality is amazing. Only gripe, and I guess you can't fault Creative for this, is that the receiver sticks out of the bottom of the switch, so depending on how you hold it, you may push on it or knock it out of the port. Perhaps a small male-female USB-C cable would fix this, if you cared. Otherwise, does exactly what I wanted.

This isn't as easy as just plug and play. With the Switch 2, I had it connected to the top USBC in the cradle and sent out to a BT receiver to my audio system. After lots of settings on the S2, pairing and telling it to be the main sound output, or not the main one, after a while, it did manage to sync with my BT receiver and send audio in low latency. I don't what I did, but it eventually worked. Then after a while, I decided to hook the Switch 2 to the HDTV via HDMI. So that's when I tried to use it for my miniPC. What a nightmare. The miniPC already has its own BT host and Windows doesn't allow (or maybe like) you to make a different BT controller to... Control things. I never to it to connect to the same BT receiver, however, I did get it to connect to a different BT receiver with default Low Latency. But my volume keys on my keyboard no longer controller the volume. The BT receiver has its own knob and was now priority over my keyboard. Problem was, that BT knob is now across the room hidden behind my audio system. So that wasn't going to work for me. I'm sure if you're using it for a game system and BT headphones or speaker with low latency options, it would work much better than it did for me. Low Latency is a must for games, but the lower sound quality takes a hit too.

Excellent. And the one of the only genuine aptx-hd Bluetooth dongles I was able to find on Amazon, I tried 4 others advertised as having aptx-hd that only had aptx or aptx- LL. This device is plug and play and once paired it will connect almost immediately upon future connections. It is easy to switch codecs via a button on top and has a strong stable connect, although the range seems to be a little disappointing, not to bad but not as strong as the standalone Tao-Tronics long range trasmitter/ receiver I also have (really excellent). Another rather disappointing aspect was its inability to pair to two devices at once as most other 5.0 Bt transmitters do. But it makes up for what it lacks with its simplicity of use, hassle free connection and superb sound quality. It is a however a very delicate device, something you are going to want to protect when not in use, unfortunately no case is included as is with what I found to be one of the only other 5.0 bt dongles with genuine aptx-hd (5Mei I think it was), that one was also sweet, till the button broke literally a day later. I am careful with this one, and it seems to be holding up. It is seen by your computer as a standalone device and headphones connect to it as such, finally a small led shows what bluetooth codec it is currently connected in, which is nice. Hope this helps, be careful, for this type of device there seems to be an inordinately large amount of misrepresented junk on Amazon claiming aptx-hd capability, this I can verify is the real deal, a bit expensive but still pretty sweet. There is no volume control or UI (on computer) for the device, and it is really not needed as it handles connections externally from your computers Bluetooth via the one button it does have. It is a excellent little device made by a reputable company, it is deficient in a few areas but if you are specifically looking for what it offers its worth it.