Headset Criteria

I am seeking a headset that will work well with a variety of phones. What do I mean by working well you may ask? The following is my criteria in rank order:

1. Assuming I am the caller, the party being called hears my voice clearly, even if I am in a noisy or windy environment (2 different difficult scenarios). The other party hears no echo and does not hear their voice.
2. I hear the other party clearly and with sufficient volume that I can hear them even when I am in a noisy environment like an airport or bar and I hear no echo, crackling, hissing or other noise.
3. I can wear the headset comfortably for extended periods without irritation to either my ear canal (small) or to the back of my ears (medium to large).
4. Pairing is quick and easy and connection to a call is quick.
5. Operation is easy and straight forward with out causing discomfort in the process.
6. Functions such as redial and voice dial (for the future?) work well.
7. The size is small and unobtrusive and doesn’t make you look like a Borg or some other strange creature.
8. The battery life is decent (>4hrs talk time) and the charger is small or better yet uses mini USB.
9. Quality of construction is good and unit feels solid.
10. Supports Bluetooth 1.2 or 2.0.

Tests & Methods

With all headsets my current testing methodology consists of testing it by first pairing it with my PC using a Bluetooth dongle. I record test sounds of me speaking at various ranges and at different background noise levels. Then I pair the unit to a cell phone. Currently the phone I am using is the Blackberry 7100t though I have also used the Blackberry 7250 and the Motorola V3. I intend to add one additional phone with Bluetooth to my testing inventory. Additional testing consists of calling my answering machine using the headset and paired phone and recording my conversation in both quiet and noisy environments. I use a TV set with the volume very high to create my noisy background. I prefer this over white noise as some reviewers use because it is far more challenging for the noise canceling algorithms than white noise that is evenly distributed across the spectrum. The spectrum used by phones for audio is very limited and white noise is likely to create the same sound pressure level at all of those frequencies. With the varying sound in a TV program which often includes dialog, background sounds such as laughter or other street noise the noise canceling has to really work well to extract your voice and not the other voices from the surrounding mix.

I finally test calling from my car to both real people and the answering machine. The ultimate test is when I call my wife from a noisy environment. She can not tolerate any distortion and will hang up on me if it is unbearable to her sensitive ears. In the future I will include sound clips from a variety of tests to help you hear what I or the recipient of my calls hears.

I will also present my subjective opinion on the quality of the build, its appearance, its comfort and ease of use.

I have a soft voice that people often say they have a difficult time hearing, especially if the environment is noisy. As a result meeting criteria number 1& 2 above is a challenge. If you can't stand to wear the headset then meeting the criteria doesn't matter much so it is hard to eliminate 3 as a must have criteria. Criteria 7 is somewhat subjective and what I think makes me look like a Borg some one else may think is "way cool." Quality is one of those hard to measure intangibles that you just get a sense of feel from handling and I have to admit that I have pretty high standards in that area.

Your criteria and order may be different than mine and you should take my comments and ratings and evaluate them against your own in making your decision. Also, try and take into account the initial wow factor and try and think about how it will be long term.

The matrix shown below is an example of the way I might evaluate a set of headsets:

The scale is 9 is excellent and 1 is awful.