The Bose Bluetooth Headset will set you back £129, which is a sizeable wedge of dosh considering it only serves one purpose. The Bose name, sleek design and ultra-comfortable fit will entice many to purchase this discreet headset but once you take your first call the iffy sound quality and especially the inability to pick up your voice in windy conditions, means that at this price we just can’t recommend it.
Bose Bluetooth Headset:
Bluetooth headsets by their very nature don’t do an awful lot. There are no apps you can use with them, you can’t play games on them, they don’t have front- or rear-facing cameras and they don’t even have a a super fast dual-core processor for God’s sake.
Bluetooth headsets, like this one from audio gurus Bose, do one thing and one thing only. They connect to your phone wirelessly to allow you take and make phone calls without having to touch your phone.
Yes, some of them allow you to stream music through your phone but who wants to listen to the latest Slipknot opus on a mono Bluetooth headset? Not us, that’s for sure i think.
Minimalism in a Bluetooth headset is a feature we hold in high regard. The less conspicuous these headsets are the better, and the Bose Bluetooth Headset is about as unobtrusive as you’re going to get.
Weighting just 12g and measuring 19 x 46 x 32mm, it is light and compact enough so as not to trouble the wearer even over a long period of time – and even more importantly it doesn’t look like an ugly slab of plastic you’ve attached to your ear with an elastic band.
The Bose headset is finished in a combination of glossy and matt black plastic with a snazzy aluminium trim, which combine to make for a very attractive unit.
The top is home to the call button and the two volume buttons, all of which are big enough to find without too much difficult while wearing the headset. On the rear is the microUSB charging port without a protective cover and the bottom of the headset houses the power slider.
On the inner side of the headset you will find the Bluetooth and battery LEDs with accompanying icons and, of course, the earpiece.
The Bose Bluetooth comes with three StayHear silicon tips (small, medium and large), which can be easily changed and replaced depending on how big or small your lugholes are.
Also in the box is a neat carrying case, USB to microUSB cable, power supply with two- and three-pin adapters and the obligatory manual - which in this case weighs just under a tonne with instructions in 287 different languages.
Features and Pairing:
Fitting the StayHear silicon tips into you ears is described in detail in the manual and sounded a little convoluted when we read it, but in reality it was a simple process and one which we found to provide an excellent fit.
The tip fits into your ear canal while the “tip wing” follows the contour of the ridges of your ear to make sure the headset goes nowhere while you’re wearing it. The arrangement is one which works perfectly and provides a very comfortable fit – even for hours at a time.
When you take your headset out of the box it is partially charged, but if you are planning on using it for any extended period of time we would recommend give it a quick charge before putting it into action. The pairing system is as straight forward as flicking the power slider from red to green, finding the headset in your phone’s Bluetooth menu and pairing. Even we managed it first time, which is a bit of a record.
If you have the headset in your ear you will have to get used to recognising a variety of beeps and tones to indicate what is going on. Four notes from high to low indicate the headset is turning on while the opposite indicates the headset is turning off.
A run of three quick notes means that you have connected with a device while low beeps indicate the battery is low. We much prefer the nice American lady who spoke to us in the Jabra Supreme set up, but it’s not too much of a strain to recognise what each beep means after a bit of use.
The Bose Bluetooth Headset can remember up to six devices and if you want to connect to a new one, simply long-press the call button for 5 seconds to make the headset discoverable again and repeat the set up process.
To answer a call, a simple press of the call button suffices and you can transfer the audio from your headset back to your phone by pressing and holding the call button again. Rejecting an incoming call is done by pressing and holding the call button and you can even transfer between two calls and begin conference calls
The Bose headset also supports Multi-point which lets you connect two devices simultaneously – however this process is less straightforward. It involves turning off Bluetooth on your phone, pressing a lot of buttons, turning on and off the headset and it’s all a bit over-complicated – however it does work.
Voice dialing is supported but as with all Bluetooth headsets it depends on which phones you are using - some HTC phones (even the Evo 3D) do not support the function.
Battery life is pegged at 4.5 hours of talk time and 175 hours standby and from our testing this seemed to be pretty much spot on (though we obviously can't attest to the standby figure) and while not the greatest battery life, should suffice for all but the most talkative among you.
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