Very true, which is why I chose to respond to this thread in particular as the OP was highlighting the difficulty in testing acoustic performance and praising the expertise of the engineers and I really do appreciate the task at hand.
If I was reading this thread without experiencing it for myself I would be saying the exact same thing. Unfortunately for me (and lots of others according to the Bose forums) my subjective experience is the complete opposite of the outcome of these tests.
Luckily it is looking like they tested the wrong upgrade path which is reassuring as I have no idea how I could refute the tests otherwise.
Doing a bit more digging, it looks like the report from Bose is testing the wrong issue. They tested 4.1.3 to 4.5.2 where as the issue is from 2.x.x and 3.x.x update to 4.5.2.
I agree it is very thorough, what is really strange from my experience with the QC35 is that they haven’t found any problem. The noise cancellation in my earphones was working perfectly, performed the upgrade, and now I can hear the person next to me typing when I couldn’t before. 100% there is a problem with the firmware update no idea how they couldn’t find it with that amount of testing.
[1] https://techleadjournal.dev/