Either mic is muted or the audio. This doesn’t seem to be a problem on android. On windows I can only do either stereo or mic. When looking at the audio devices I see 2 payback devices related to this pair of earphones. One is stereo and the other is hands-free. The behavior I described happens when stereo is the playback device. It works as I want when the hands free device is selected but the audio quality is awful.

Searching online shows me that many others are dealing with this problem and this is a limitation of Bluetooth but wireless gaming headsets exist and even the airpods work just fine. So what am I missing?

If I’m limited by hardware what should I look for in my next purchase? I really need it for WFH.