Why is AirDrop so unrealiable?

So AirDrop is perhaps the least reliable feature Apple has, which is a pity because, when it works --which is only about 20% of the time--, it's actually immensely practical!

At home I've 2 iPhones and 2 iPads running iOS 11 and two MacBook Pros running macOS Sierra, and when I can communicate between them and send stuff between them it's a dream come true... but that's only 20% of time... the other 80% it's head-banging-against-desk difficult to get AirDrop to work. I turn all radios off and back on (i.e. WiFi and Bluetooth) on all devices involved, I check and re-check AirDrop is activated, and configured to allow anybody to find you on it, I place the devices one on top of the other, I even shake them and shout: "Wake up! Work!", and sometimes eventually it works but, most of the time, it doesn't.

Now, before you recommend this other step: yes, I've also tried turning the devices off and back on, and this is more often what tends to make them work--however, we can all 100% agree that having to turn both devices (because you can never know which is the culprit) off and back on before you can send something using AirDrop makes it the worst, least practical feature in existence! It reminds me of when Bluetooth came out and one could, in theory, send certain info between phones but, in practice, it seldom seemed to work well... only now it's 2018 and not 1998!

The worst is when I try to send stuff to and from the MacBook Pros; it seldom seems to work well between them and devices running iOS. Normally, the devices can find the computers but not the other way around. And I have a **** of a time communicating between both computers!

Then, when I finally get a device to appear in AirDrop, 9/10 times it's not the device I need to appear. (This last, I guess, is just bad luck!) So you can often see me giving out a sigh of frustration and going for the Messages app instead--which, in the case of large photos and videos, compresses my data, so is not the best solution anyway.

Online, I can only find a slew of such "home remedies" such as the ones I mentioned above. Then, there's the comments saying: "Oh, it's because AirDrop is known to have conflicts with such and such iteration of the iOS/macOS...", which, as it turns out, seems to be every single iteration that has come out. So I'm really wondering when this feature will finally seem like it's come out of beta mode and start working for the user 100% of the time... Or maybe it's just me or something in my house which is making my AirDrop experience a real bummer! I don't know. Is everyone having similar experiences with AirDrop? Is there any REAL fix for AirDrop to work consistently? I would REALLY love to know!

P.S. I also find that the fact one has to setup AirDrop as "Everyone"--so anyone can see your device and ask to send you stuff--in order to ensure that your own devices can see each other is an absolutely impractical and absurd workaround... if you're signed in with your Apple ID in all devices, why on Earth wouldn't you qualify as a "Contact" and, therefore, be available for AirDrop in "Contacts Only"? (Which is the setting one should really have one's AirDrop on most of the time, for security reasons!) This is what really shows me AirDrop is in perpetual beta testing mode... My own contact's devices don't usually show up when in "Contacts Only" mode, let alone my own devices... so I'm forced to have AirDrop always as "Everyone"... and it still only works 20% of the time, as I've been saying...