@domedish
Regular BT, like phone to Marvels is of inferior quality than the connection between marvels and roger mics or marvels and tv connector. Partner mic uses the same thing as tv connector.
What I mean by that?
Phone BT needs clear view, and if you have a wall between you and phone and add distance, signal cuts out. My rough estimate based on my apartment, 10m clear sight, ok, but same distance or less with a wall (so turn into another room), break signal.
Roger and TV connector on the other hand go through several walls (concrete and plaster type) and bigger distance, like 15m, no cut. I have one single spot that I found so far in my apartment where signal will die, and that’s the opposite side of apartment, and TV is close to the side, not in the middle.
I wouldn’t worry about bodies, just distance in closed venues. And if in open, that could be a problem, so mitigate it by closer distance and clear line of sight.
Phone BT to marvels work ok even in my bag in open (nearest building is 50m away, I’m on a bridge but no walls there either), only condition is that it’s directly between my HAs. So in a plane that would cut me perpendicular to the ground through my nose, leaving each HA on its side. If I turn my head, signal dies in one HA.
I didn’t test roger mics or TV connector in the same situation.
However, be warned. For roger mics to work you need to buy roger receiver. In case of marvels since the hardware is there you need only what I call licence /key part.
You can obtain it by buying device which name ends in ‘iN’ (comes with 2) or 2x roger x receiver for dai shoes and transferring the licence with a device (your fitter can do that).
Also, you need only one iN device, because you don’t need more than one ‘licence’ in your HA (nor you can install more than one).
But you can pair your HA with bunch of mics once you have that ‘licence’ in it.
With partner mic and tv connector you don’t need roger license because they’re not roger mics. And that’s one of the reasons why they’re cheaper.
So, BT dongle could work (HA is in pairing mode for a few seconds when you turn it on, if that helps with info how to pair it, I have no experience), but parter mic should handle better the distance and obstacles.
Oh and sound quality of phonak or roger devices is much better compared to BT. I mean for speech. That was my main focus of comparison.
Hope this helps somewhat
Edit pen vs easy pen, for pen you can choose and fix the mode (lanyard, omni, interview, automatic) while easy is only in automatic, using gyroscope. I don’t like when devices think too much what I want, I want to tell them what I want.
Distance at which lanyard works is around the neck, but outside in the restaurant it didn’t pick up voice even at 15cm or closer. I think only at 5cm.
Interview mode was significantly better and could pick up the same very soft spoken person from around 50cm.
Omni was completely useless in that specific situation.
But you couldn’t lay down easy pen and fix it in interview mode and point (eg on a glass) to spare yourself of holding it.