A long time ago, when Bluetooth was even less reliable that it is nowadays, some people had luck with pairing devices under less than ideal circumstances.
Example:
Pair a phone with the headset in your ear and the phone in your hand and you had problems with dropouts.
Pair the same two devices again, except this time stick the headset in a metal filing cabinet and do it from across the room. Now when used as intended (headset in ear, handset in pocket) the dropouts are gone.
It's almost as if the initial pairing sets the transmit power levels and they stay that way.
In my case,