From my experience Blueman is better working than Blueberry, with a noticeable performance boost on bluetooth audio devices (especially headsets). (Also reproduced by many other linux users online, just search on it).
I have opted to replace Blueberry in my install with Blueman and would recommend anyone having issues with headsets or microphones with Blueberry to try the same.
I went back to Xfce for now; I still want to try Cinnamon, but needed a fully functional one without need for diagnostics for now.
I mean I am sure the issues (with cinnamon) was on my end, but that only requires even more diagnostics
However I had these even on Gnome on Manjaro. My headset insisted on taking 5 minutes to connect and then only connecting in headset (aka low fi audio) mode until de-paired and re-paired… Every reboot.
(I never run Plasma or LXqt so I can’t report on the Qt bluetooth front ends)
And again, there have been reports (as far back as early 2018 up till now) I found while searching online on Blueberry and specifically bluetooth headsets and speakers with this issue.
I am no expert on this, but I DO know that as far as until a few a few months ago (I do not know if that is still the case with release 19 that’s coming up for them but as far as I know all 18.x releases use Blueman) the Manjaro Cinnamon edition did chose to not do as Mint and Ubuntu Cinnamon but include Blueman instead of Blueberry for this reason.
As for packages, as far as I know what is needed is Blueman, bluez and bluez-utils.
I’ll make a new bluetooth button next to the old one (in Welcome, Add More Apps tab). The new button installs blueman, and the old one installs blueberry. Then users can decide.
And if users confirm one way or the other, I can then remove the “unnecessary” button.
I consider MATE DE a mid term between xfce and cinnamon.
If i didn’t use i3 i’d probably get back to it, best panel out there to my needs, light on resources, very customizable and complete.