It seems to be problems with bows from my experience. I craft legendary enchanted bows for companions and they still use a hunting bow. All other items I craft for them they equip.

I want to know what happened to character sheets and drag and drop inventories to manage a whole party. Games in the past already solved these issues, so where does this inexcusable regression come from?

Are you sure? Did you try a resurrect? I think they are leveled.

OP: This is normal behavior. NPCs get standard items in their inv with which they spawn. To cirumvent this one would have to do a removeallitems and additem lvllist or some such.

Just a guess (I'll test it out in a minute) but in Fallout NPCs had to be given ammo for the weapons you gave them - and when you create a weapon in the GECK, there's a checkbox for "NPCs use ammo" among the various stats and settings. Companion weapons, the one's that are permanently in their inventory, do not have that option checked, so they don't use ammo when equipped by an NPC. Normal weapons that you find as loot do have that option checked, so they use ammo regardless of whether it's the player or an NPC using them. Without ammo, in this case arrows, they won't equip the non-companion weapon you give them, and default to their crappy companion bow.

*Edit - nope, that's not it. Gave Lydia a legendary glass bow and no arrows and she equipped it and used it fine.

I quite agree with the OP. I couldn't make Farkas equip his brand new Ebony bow, and kept using that crappy wooden one. Let's hope it's fixed, either in patches, or mods.

Anyway, as usual, companions are more annoying than helpful, especially at higher levels. By the time Farkas reacted to some enemy attacking us, I had already killed them all. Companions are only useful when there are a lot of enemies, or when you've to withdraw to heal yourself (due to being a lot of enemies). Sadly there hardly are significant groups of enemies.

BTW, didn't Bethesda said that they implemented a "magnetism" system in order not to hit companions? Because I keep hitting them the same way than in Oblivion...