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Buying a Bluetooth Headset – A Guide

As you can see from the large range of Bluetooth headsets that are available on the market, it can be difficult to decide which one to buy. This short guide is intended to help you through this decision process so that you get the headset that is best for you.

A Bluetooth branded vr headsets is an important item which has many benefits. Used when driving a car it makes using your phone legal; used in the street it does not reveal your phone which can make you a target; it places a distance between your phone and your head so eliminating the health concerns of mobile phone usage; and it can make a fashion statement.

The early Bluetooth headsets looked very geeky and strange. Nowadays thankfully they are much more discreet and fashionable; some are even attractive. Their performance has also improved considerably as has their battery life. The earlier versions used the Bluetooth 1.2 protocol which had significant limitations. The more modern ones use Bluetooth 2.0 and later which is much faster at making connections, provides much improved audio quality and provides extended battery life.

In this guide we will look at some of the important things to consider before making your purchase. These are headset design, comfort, battery life, audio quality, mono versus stereo, charging and usability.

Which Bluetooth Headset Design?

As has already been stated, modern Bluetooth headsets don’t have to look geeky and some are positively fashionable. Some are tiny so that they fit in the ear in such a manner that makes them almost invisible. Others have ear clips that provide a more secure mounting but make them more visible. Some come in a range of fashionable colours with exchangeable skins, some have the appearance of (and really are) high technology. Certainly you should choose a design that you would feel comfortable to wear and that will look good on you.

How Heavy?

Early Bluetooth headsets were relatively heavy and bulky compared to modern ones and often weighted over 22 grams which could become quite uncomfortable if worn for long periods. Nowadays it is possible to buy Bluetooth headsets which weigh only 8 to 10 grams. These are much easier to wear and you can easily forget you are wearing one. Much of the weight is due to the battery, but modern battery technology along with power saving designs has allowed much smaller an lighter batteries to be used.

What is the Battery Life?

As described in the previous paragraph, the batteries in modern Bluetooth headsets are much smaller that they were only a few years ago. Despite this, battery life has also been extended. This is due to a number of factors: modern headsets are much cleverer at conserving energy when in the ‘sniff’ or standby mode; new Bluetooth protocols are much more efficient than earlier ones; modern batteries do not suffer from hysteresis or memory which was caused earlier batteries to deteriorate quickly. A good Bluetooth headset can be expected to offer talk times of over eight hours and standby times of over 140 hours.

How good does it sound?

Modern Bluetooth headsets can offer excellent audio quality. Even the lower priced ones generally have some sort of noise cancellation system, and many of the admittedly somewhat expensive ones use state of the art noise cancellation technologies that are superb. Remember that you need also to consider how you sound to the people on the other end of your phone call, not just how they sound to you. Price is not always an indicator of quality in this respect, but it is a fact of life that those on the top end of the price scales tend to perform much better that those in the bargain basement.

 

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