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Headphones have come a long way from being clunky cans on your head. They’re now packed with features like noise cancellation and handy connectivity tricks that can quickly make themselves indispensable.
When buying a new pair of headphones, your specific requirements will vary from others. However, there is one vital feature you shouldn’t skip.
What Is Multipoint Connectivity in Headphones?
Multipoint connectivity in Bluetooth headphones is exactly what it sounds like. Using this feature, you may connect your headphones, earbuds, speaker, or any supported device to at least two source devices.
For example, if you’re using headphones with multipoint connectivity with your laptop, you can pair them to your phone simultaneously. When you switch audio sources on the device, like going from watching YouTube on your laptop to listening to music on your phone, the headphones will automatically switch over.
Multiple variants and implementations of this technology vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, but the core concept remains the same. If you want more information, we’ve coveredmultipoint connectivity and how it worksin depth. It’s not perfect and does have some limitations, like only being able to listen to one audio source despite being connected to multiple, but it does its job well overall.
How Does Multipoint Connectivity Help Daily Usage?
Wondering what makes this tech so invaluable? Just try remembering the last time you were trying to unpair your headphones from one device to connect them to another.
Unlike the good old 3.5mm headphone cables, which could be plugged or unplugged at a moment’s notice, Bluetooth takes a few seconds to connect or disconnect, even in its best implementations.
If you’ve got your Bluetooth headphones hooked up to your laptop and you get a phone call, you’ll either have to spend a couple of minutes fumbling around trying to switch devices or take a call on your phone. Depending on how often you need to switch between devices, this can be a bit of a bothersome thing to do.
In my case, I would need to switch my Sony WF-1000XM3s between my laptop and phone every time I walked away from my dorm room desk, or I got a call. Doing this multiple times was too much of a hassle. Since I upgraded to my Sony WH-CH720N (Sony’s usual terrible naming scheme) with multipoint connectivity, pairing my headphones to my devices has become a thing of the past.
Most Bluetooth devices will automatically connect to the previous device they were paired with. In the case of multipoint connectivity, my headphones connect to both my PC and laptop at the same time, so fumbling between devices is no longer a concern. If I get calls on my phone, the headphones automatically switch over and then switch back once the call is disconnected.
Overall, multipoint connectivity is a quality-of-life feature that you’ll really appreciate if you want to use one pair of headphones for everything. Depending onhow much you’re willing to spend on your headphones, I recommend shelling out extra if you can.
