I’ve concluded that USB headsets are preferred (over BT) because of latency. What about HID devices? While some wireless devices likely use fast proprietary wireless systems, it seems generally there is still an advantage to using USB HID (human interaction device) devices. Especially with a fast editor like Helix.
For fast typists and competitive gamers, the added latency of Bluetooth can feel “mushy,” less responsive, or hinder rapid keystroke and mouse actions.
All the little things add up to whether your editing setup feels mushy or responsive, or if the it feels like the cursor is attached directly to your finger.
VS Code typically adds tens to hundreds of milliseconds more latency compared to terminal-based editors like Neovim or Helix, both on startup and during regular editing—the difference is especially noticeable during heavy workloads or on less powerful hardware.
While most people don’t think about these things, they do make a difference. Mushy vs responsive – what do you want for your tools?
Prime makes a case for minimizing the navigation effort/latency – the time it takes to find things. (he recently switched to Arch Linux + Hyperland).
The real productivity boost comes from reducing mental overhead and repetitive zone-breaking operations: it’s more important to optimize navigation, window management, and typing than build over-customized configs.
The main takeaway: create a development workspace that is personalized for efficiency, not for looks or trends, and focus on reducing repetitive effort.
Add WiFi network latency on top of Bluetooth and you have a perfect disaster waiting when doing videoconferencing. Wired network connection plus USB headset is the secret to trouble free videoconferencing. Another reason to favor USB headsets over Bluetooth is that the Bluetooth headset profile has a mono lo-fi audio channel for audio receive along with the mono microphone channel. A USB headset will still have hi-fi stereo audio along with the microphone channel.
Some say that “good” Wi-Fi adds very little latency (i.e. 1-2 ms. on average), but often not considered is the variability of latency that occurs, which can regularly cause brief latency spikes (i.e. 20+ ms) when you’re only a few rooms away from the access point. As @jeffsFOM pointed out, if you combine with other forms of latency (i.e. wireless headphones), this will be noticed.
Also, I use Sublime Text as my GUI text editor primarily because the latency of VS code is very real. And, I’m married to the well-maintained Git Savvy plugin for Sublime Text.
