I may have finally found Bluetooth nirvana. I'm becoming a fan of the technology (finally).
On strong recommendations, I just bought a Zivio Boom headset for use with my iPhone. I've lamented for the last couple of years that every single BT headset I've ever used (and I've used many) has been absolute crap when it came to filtering environmental noise.
Since my most common use is walking outside, or driving in my car, 90+% of my time on a BT headset has environmental noise.
I've looked for a BT headset with a boom for quite some time. All the shorter headsets (that don't place a microphone close to ones mouth) use omni-directional microphones. These don't work very well in a noisy environment as to be sufficiently sensitive to pick up your voice from four to five inches away they pick up a lot of extraneous sound.
Some manufacturers have add noise-cancelling (only good when the sound source is a constant frequency range and amplitude) and some have added a second microphone and circuitry to discriminate between your voice and environmental sound. None work particularly well, sadly.
But the Zivio has an extendable, bendable (very slightly) boom mic that places the mike within an inch or two of my mouth. Early tests with a live (loud) TV in the background proved very effective (according to my callees).
So, both thumbs up for the best BT headset I've found so far.
I should note that it comes with six (!) different earpieces and an optional earhook to help it fit your ear. Mine has a very small canal (and doesn't fit the standard Apple headphones at all) and I managed to find one that fits this headset very well.
Posted by artandscience at December 6, 2009 02:37 PM