there are other devices which do not perform as expected. 

And I think it is MS to blame because they do not open the settings to be user adjustable.

just my 2 cents ...

Conclusion:

For unknown reason the Plantronic and the Sennheiser do not use the “Hands-Free AG Audio” profile but something of their own, with significantly higher sound quality for the mic. Still no user adjustable sound quality setting is possible.

Tested Apple headsets and one other BT device are stuck to low quality audio profile, due to the fact that Windows does not allow the user to freely choose the quality within the “Hands-Free AG Audio” profile.

@Windows developers: get this fixed please. Make the sound quality user adjustable on the "Hands-Free AG Audio" profile as well.
Please do not bother about things like "reduced battery life of the BT device" - the user himself should decide.

Apple AirPods supports Hands Free Profile 1.5 (which is 8k bitrate) and not HFP 1.6 (which is 16k bitrate). Same thing for MPOW. How is that Microsoft's fault?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250418163

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Bluetooth_profiles#Hands-Free_Profile_(HFP)

The good sounding Plantronics and Sennheiser uses HFP 1.6.

Your notebook supports HFP 1.6. During the Bluetooth pairing process, your computer asks your headsets which Hands Free Profile version they support. The good sounding headsets tell your computer that they support HFP 1.6. The bad sounding headsets tell your computer that they support HFP 1.5.

 But with Apple PCs everything is ok and this does not amswer the question, why Microsoft does not allow the user to choose the quality.

Apple computers with AirPods --- are communicated by a proprietary protocol. They are using the Bluetooth radio antenna doing proprietary stuff.

The Bluetooth handshake automatically tells each other what is their highest bitrate supported.

This is like how you connect computer to your monitor. The computer asks the monitor by HDMI --- do you do 120 Hz? The monitor answers the computer back by HDMI --- no I don't do 120 Hz. So the computer then connects the monitor at 60 Hz.

You are basically complaining on why your computer greys out 120 Hz on the graphics control panel --- the simple answer is that the monitor's maximum refresh rate is only 60 Hz.

There are a lot of moving parts --- but none of which points to Microsoft themselves.

Bluetooth contains many optional audio codecs.

Mac computers uses AAC as optional Bluetooth audio codec. Android phones with Qualcomm chipsets uses aptX (invented by Qualcomm) as optional Bluetooth audio codec.

Whether your Windows 10 laptop contains the optional Hands Free Profile 1.6 wideband mSBC audio codec (with 16 kHz sampling rate) --- that depends on whether your laptop manufacturer pays the licensing fee for that optional audio codec.

You may buy a Bluetooth headset that has the optional wideband mSBC codec, but Dell cheapen out and didn't pay for that optional codec for your laptop -- then you are out of luck.

You may buy a pair of AirPods that uses AAC as their optional codec and you buy a Mac laptop that also uses AAC as their optional codec --- you are really getting nice sound. You buy a Windows laptop which no PC manufacturer ever include AAC as an optional Bluetooth codec, you are out of luck.

You may buy a pair of Bluetooth headset with aptX as optional codec and you buy an android phone that comes with aptX as optional codec --- you are getting nice sound. But if you are an iphone user, then you are out of luck.

How did you get to those settings? I've been trying for about an hour now.

For AirPods to work as good as on MacBook in windows, is it possible to buy some Bluetooth adapter and get good quality?

Guys, I have a solution that worked really good for me : give up and sell those crappy Apple headphones ! 😄

Microsoft is adding AAC codec to their Bluetooth stack.

https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-windows-10-aac-bluetooth-codec-support-203929715.html

Does this update actually solve the bad input/output quality of the airpods' headset setup? I've read the article but I'm not sure I got that.

Not sure if this has an impact on the setting for hands free audio which we are talking about here.

Will check that as soon as my IT dept. rolls out the update (my biz notebook is centraly managed by our IT).