Sony WH1000XM5 headphones are my daily driver, mainly Zoom calls and music. I'm generally pretty happy with them, but one big gripe I have is when I'm on a call and briefly take off my headphones to e.g. chat with someone in the room, there is like a 90% chance they stop working and I have to reconnect them.

It happens so often I even wrote a script to switch to the MacBook internal speakers then back to the headphones.

I've used wired headphones before (and the Sony even has a wired option), but I didn't like how the cord was constantly getting the the way of my arms.

edit: Another big gripe is with the Bluetooth codec itself, and how the quality changes depending on if the mic is active.

Thank you, this brings me a feeling of relief because after constantly dealing with various wireless bt headphone issues when using linux it frequented my mind that surely on the other side of the fence people don't have this kind of problems.

You can use the Sound Connect app to disable auto pause and auto power off.