Jabra BT500
REVIEW DATE: 09.21.06
PC Magazine

By Eliot Van Buskirk

If the Jabra BT500 ($119.99 list) looks a little familiar, that's because it's an update of the company's popular BT250 model. The BT500 adds a little battery life and Bluetooth 1.2 but keeps the same overall design, locating the microphone closer to your mouth than most other headsets do. Although competing headsets such as the Samsung WEP200 and Plantronics Discovery 645 are considerably smaller than the BT500, it stands out for its comfortable, stable fit and easy pairing. Still, the Jabra's conventional headset design is far from pretty.

We had no problems pairing our test phones (the Samsung SPH-A900 and the Nextel i580) and laptop with the 0.7-ounce BT500, thanks to a dedicated button that enables other Bluetooth devices to discover it.
Once connected to your cell phone, you can use the BT500 to do all the standard headset actions—answering calls, making voice-activated calls, and rejecting or muting calls. One button near the end of the mic boom handles all of these functions easily, without much of a learning curve.

The BT500 has a hook that fits snugly over the ear, as well as a soft gel earbud that rests on the outside of your ear canal rather than forming a tight seal. The result is one of the most comfortable headsets I've tested. Also, it stays put even when subjected to vigorous head-banging. The lack of an airtight seal also lets you hear what's going on around you while you're not talking, unlike headsets that can block too much ambient sound. Two raised volume nubs make it easy to adjust volume without removing the headset.

The BT500 offers fairly clear visual feedback: A blue LED below the surface of the rubber outer rim indicates that the device is pairing, active, or on standby; red means that the battery is running low, or that it's successfully charging.
While indoors (recording direct to computer), the Jabra made voices sound slightly bassy and a little bit muffled, so if you're looking for a headset to use for VoIP as well as cell calls, you might want to look elsewhere. But it sounded clean during phone conversations. Although the device picked up a decent amount of interference from the wind, my voice was still audible during gusts. As for the range, I started to encounter crackling interference at about 30 feet from the phone without line-of-sight obstructions, which is to be expected from a Class2 Bluetooth device.

Jabra includes a standard AC adapter with the BT500, as well as a short USB cord for charging it via computer. The rechargeable battery is rated for a lengthy 10 days of standby time or 8 hours of talk time.

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]