Problems with new H9i's bought yesterday

70 replies

So I took the plunge and bought the H9i after listening to a pair of H9's at the local dealer.
Brought them home and prepared myself for an evening of listening pleasure.

How wrong was I.

First off I upgraded the firmware to the latest version via the B&O app, so I have 5.03

Put the headphones on and started to play some music and it pauses at random times with no input from me.
Volume control is terrible, having to rotate my finger around the touchpad a dozen or more times to even get a small change. Altering my finger position does little to help, instead resulting in it deciding I asked to switch on/off ANC, or skip tracks.

Sometimes I will get a bleep in the earpiece, music pauses, and the led turns orange, and the whole thing just locks up. If i try to unpause via my iPhone it instantly pauses again. By instantly i mean that the icon on the phone screen flashes between play and pause in a fraction of a second. I have to switch off the H9i to get back control of my phone.

ANC is poor, with a very noticeable hiss in the background when there is no music playing.

Listening to some songs (between pauses!) there is also noticeable distortion of S's when ANC is switched on.

All of the above was tested via bluetooth, and also via cable connection.

Has anyone else experienced any of these issues?

I called the B&O dealer this morning and he said bring them in and we'll send them off to the service centre. Seriously? I bought these things less than 24 hours ago and now I have to wait for you to send them off for repair? What happened to good customer service where a product is just replaced if it was clearly defective when you bought it?

For a premium pair of headphones costing €500, these are not problems I would have expected to be having. Sure, they sound great, when you can actually listen to them, but these should never have made it through QC.

Hi

We have had a rare out of the box issue with a pair of H9i. One other person had the same symptoms you described and after a factory reset following the software update they worked well.

One other thing, do you put the headphones on first then switch them on as this plays havoc with the proximity sensor, the music will stop. You need to have them in your hand, turn them on, wait 1/2 a second then place them on your head. You can. Is disable the proximity feature. Hope this helps before a trip back to your dealer. BTW you should be able to straight swap these at the store and let them deal with the warranty return behind the scenes. We have had an instance where a pair of earphones purchased from us were deemed faulty and we insisted on sending them back to be screened, thankfully we did as they had been through the washing machine (he confessed after!) not saying your H9i have!

Software upgrade?
Wasn't the software working when they were sold?
It can't be the buyers job to make things work he just bought.
Software is just another part of the item, and of course the whole item should work as expected and promised when purhased.
Replacing bad software with new is a repair. I would never accept having to do repairs to anything I just bought, to make it work as advertized.

First thing should always be to look in the manual and make sure you are using the item correctly.
Then, if something is not working take it back to the dealer and have them fix it. Hardware or software or whatever.

Martin

w5bno123 wrote:
I have to update products such as my iPhone when it comes out of the box, this is common practice in the software driven world we now live in. Bugs and fixes occur on a regular basis with most modern electronics...

Yes, but it was working as promised, when you bought it.
Then, later, things around the item changes and the item can be changed to suit. 

If a repair, be that to hardware or software, is necessary to make the thing work, I would expect this to be done before
the dealer hands the thing over to me in the shop. 

Bugs are faults.
A working item has no bugs. 

Martin

w5bno123 wrote:
Hi

 

 

We have had a rare out of the box issue with a pair of H9i. One other person had the same symptoms you described and after a factory reset following the software update they worked well.

 

 

One other thing, do you put the headphones on first then switch them on as this plays havoc with the proximity sensor, the music will stop. You need to have them in your hand, turn them on, wait 1/2 a second then place them on your head. You can. Is disable the proximity feature. Hope this helps before a trip back to your dealer. BTW you should be able to straight swap these at the store and let them deal with the warranty return behind the scenes. We have had an instance where a pair of earphones purchased from us were deemed faulty and we insisted on sending them back to be screened, thankfully we did as they had been through the washing machine (he confessed after!) not saying your H9i have!

I hope this is in the manual!

 

w5bno123 wrote:
Hi

 

 

We have had a rare out of the box issue with a pair of H9i. One other person had the same symptoms you described and after a factory reset following the software update they worked well.

 

 

One other thing, do you put the headphones on first then switch them on as this plays havoc with the proximity sensor, the music will stop. You need to have them in your hand, turn them on, wait 1/2 a second then place them on your head. You can. Is disable the proximity feature. Hope this helps before a trip back to your dealer. BTW you should be able to straight swap these at the store and let them deal with the warranty return behind the scenes. We have had an instance where a pair of earphones purchased from us were deemed faulty and we insisted on sending them back to be screened, thankfully we did as they had been through the washing machine (he confessed after!) not saying your H9i have!

I hope this is in the manual!

 

Just press them for a replacement or refund (whichever you’d prefer) - asking you to send something you’ve just bought off for repair is unacceptable.
Completely agree with Dillen and Puncher.
Dillen wrote:

Bugs are faults. A working item has no bugs.

Martin

All software has bugs.
When a bug affects the fundamental purpose of the device, it is a defect.
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