Related
At HowardForums, Fire Dragan 418 has posted some comparative information on the currently available Bluetooth stereo headphones. Make sure you visit the thread.
Unfortunately, due to the limitations of the forum engine (there's no HTML table support), the results are a bit hard to read. I, therefore, took the liberty to convert the results to HTML so that they're far more readable:
THE CHART IS HERE – CLICK THE LINK!!!!
My remarks: I don’t think the Plantronics Pulsar 590A has bad Bluetooth range at all. On the contrary: in general, in our flat, I can listen to the room next to the room my Dell Axim x51v is located at (I’ve found the x51v to have the best range; my other, flawless, high-quality and compatible A2DP-capable PDA’s (PL720, hx4700) have slightly – but not much!! – less range). That is, the – in my opinion! – relatively bad range according to the chart shouldn’t be a showstopper.
As far as the Hi-Fi sound quality of the 590A is concerned, in the meantime, not very good highs aside (which, to a certain degree, can easily be cured by using equalization), I started to love my 590A a lot. It’s a really nice BT headphone – I certainly recommend it, despite the (comparatively) high price. I only wish the Bluetooth light could be entirely switched off – it’s really distracting and annoying in darkness.
Recommended links
You have skipping or other problems with your stereo Bluetooth headphones? Read this!
Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) compatible media players
Mobileburn.com and PDAMania Publish Great Bluetooth Stereo Headset Roundups
A2DP Headset Review Thread - not many posts yet, but worth checking out
And, in general, the Bluetooth category on the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog. Make sure you check it out!
UPDATE (10/23/2006): discussions of this article / more info: PPCT; AximSite.
Unfortunately, except for Mobileburn’s excellent Bluetooth Stereo Headset Roundup and some HowardForums threads (see for example this), there are no real one-to-one feature & compatibility & quality comparisons between current Bluetooth stereo headsets.
This is why I’ve set out and made some SERIOUS tests with three current and popular BT stereo headphones: the Nokia HS-12W, the Plantronics Pulsar 590A/E and the brand new Plantronics Pulsar 260.
The article is still a work-in-progress; however, the comparison chart is already worth checking out if you want to learn more about these headsets, how they deliver in reality, whether, for example, they are Microsoft BT stack-compatible (unfortunately, the Plantronics headsets wont deliver good results with this stack) and whether the battery life / recharging time figures given my the manufacturers are reliable.
Do check out http://www.winmobiletech.com/032007ThreeBTStereoHeadphones/table.html and post your comments!
Have you ever wanted to listen to radio stations on the Net? With
the advent of the pre-3G technology EDGE, which, with most network operators, is sufficient for listening to most (if not all) radio stations on the Net (let alone 3G, of course),
the proliferation of unlimited data contracts
and, last but in no way least, the really revolutionary, bandwidth-saving, "high-quality stereo even over slow GPRS connections" AAC+ (also known as HE-AAC, aacPlus etc.) streams becoming common,
they have become accessible to almost everyone with a connected mobile device (for example, a mobile phone) on both the Windows Mobile and the Symbian platform. (Note that the final version of the article / chart will also have extensive info on the seriously enhanced Pocket Tunes 4.0 on the Palm OS – that is, it’ll cover no less than THREE mobile operating systems!)
In my forthcoming article, I discuss for example the following questions:
What radio stations there are?
How you can access them?
What should you pay attention to, depending on whether you’re on an unlimited contact, and/or super-slow GPRS connections?
Which radio client to choose, depending on your needs?
Note that I still haven’t decided whether I should publish the Multimedia Streaming Bible as a separate entity, or, part of my (even larger) Multimedia Bible. There are both pros and cons in both approaches:
Pros:
I can publish it in the next one or two days – you don’t need to wait some 1-2 additional weeks for the Bible to be, finally, published
Separating these pretty disjunctive subjects greatly help in reducing the size of the Multimedia Bible. This would be pretty much welcome as it’s going to be BIG. Very big.
Cons:
It’ll miss a lot of information I’ll only give you in the “big” Multimedia Bible like equalizer support, hardware button support, alarm / sleep shutdown functionality, screen dimming etc. That is, the Streaming Bible will only contain information strictly related to audio streaming and will not contain other info, which may make it easier to choose from the given apps. (This missing info, however, WILL be present in the final Multimedia Bible – sometimes later.)
And yes, before I forget about it: HERE’S THE CHART. Do check it out, do comment it, do send me flames and/or greetings. And, do enjoy the information not readily available anywhere else - for example, many people have been hunting for an AAC+-capable player for ages (see for example THIS). Yes, noone has actually published a tutorial on what players are able to play these streams.
It contains both protocol compliance reports, battery life-related remarks (with Windows Mobile, in CPU usage percentage; with Symbian, in Watts) and some other goodies like whether they’re able to record the radio stream.
Again and again, as has already been pointed out above, the chart mostly contains strictly (audio) streaming-related info. That is, I haven’t for example elaborated on stuff that I’ll discuss in the final Multimedia Bible. Subjects like these are equalizers, button handling, AVRCP compliance etc. I’ve mentioned SOME of these in the Pros / Cons rows at the bottom but, except for the links, the price and the MOST important compatibility information (for example, Mundu Radio’s not really supporting (W)VGA Pocket PC’s). These questions will ALL be covered in the chart targeted at the wider audience (not only those that want a radio client).
Also note that I don’t discuss Orb and the like in here; they’ll only be elaborated on in the final Multimedia Bible. The same stands for video streaming, LAN access and UPnP. With this Bible, my “only” aim is to give you a complete picture of listening to the already existing, remote radio stations on the Net.
Added the just-released Kinoma Play 1.0 and Spb Online 1.0 to the chart. See my Spb Online review for more info.
Have you ever wanted to listen to radio stations on the Net? With
the advent of the pre-3G technology EDGE, which, with most network operators, is sufficient for listening to most (if not all) radio stations on the Net (let alone 3G, of course),
the proliferation of unlimited data contracts
and, last but in no way least, the really revolutionary, bandwidth-saving, "high-quality stereo even over slow GPRS connections" AAC+ (also known as HE-AAC, aacPlus etc.) streams becoming common,
they have become accessible to almost everyone with a connected mobile device (for example, a mobile phone) on both the Windows Mobile and the Symbian platform. (Note that the final version of the article / chart will also have extensive info on the seriously enhanced Pocket Tunes 4.0 on the Palm OS – that is, it’ll cover no less than THREE mobile operating systems!)
In my forthcoming article, I discuss for example the following questions:
What radio stations there are?
How you can access them?
What should you pay attention to, depending on whether you’re on an unlimited contact, and/or super-slow GPRS connections?
Which radio client to choose, depending on your needs?
Note that I still haven’t decided whether I should publish the Multimedia Streaming Bible as a separate entity, or, part of my (even larger) Multimedia Bible. There are both pros and cons in both approaches:
Pros:
I can publish it in the next one or two days – you don’t need to wait some 1-2 additional weeks for the Bible to be, finally, published
Separating these pretty disjunctive subjects greatly help in reducing the size of the Multimedia Bible. This would be pretty much welcome as it’s going to be BIG. Very big.
Cons:
It’ll miss a lot of information I’ll only give you in the “big” Multimedia Bible like equalizer support, hardware button support, alarm / sleep shutdown functionality, screen dimming etc. That is, the Streaming Bible will only contain information strictly related to audio streaming and will not contain other info, which may make it easier to choose from the given apps. (This missing info, however, WILL be present in the final Multimedia Bible – sometimes later.)
And yes, before I forget about it: HERE’S THE CHART. Do check it out, do comment it, do send me flames and/or greetings. And, do enjoy the information not readily available anywhere else - for example, many people have been hunting for an AAC+-capable player for ages (see for example THIS). Yes, noone has actually published a tutorial on what players are able to play these streams.
It contains both protocol compliance reports, battery life-related remarks (with Windows Mobile, in CPU usage percentage; with Symbian, in Watts) and some other goodies like whether they’re able to record the radio stream.
Again and again, as has already been pointed out above, the chart mostly contains strictly (audio) streaming-related info. That is, I haven’t for example elaborated on stuff that I’ll discuss in the final Multimedia Bible. Subjects like these are equalizers, button handling, AVRCP compliance etc. I’ve mentioned SOME of these in the Pros / Cons rows at the bottom but, except for the links, the price and the MOST important compatibility information (for example, Mundu Radio’s not really supporting (W)VGA Pocket PC’s). These questions will ALL be covered in the chart targeted at the wider audience (not only those that want a radio client).
Also note that I don’t discuss Orb and the like in here; they’ll only be elaborated on in the final Multimedia Bible. The same stands for video streaming, LAN access and UPnP. With this Bible, my “only” aim is to give you a complete picture of listening to the already existing, remote radio stations on the Net.
I’ve, among other things, been working on an A2DP headphones roundup. While it’ll take at least 4-5 days to publish it (I’m still waiting for a Motorola HT820, which will also be included), I already publish a chart of four headphones so that you can avoid going for a pair of headphones that is completely incompatible with your handset / PDA.
Note that I’ve tested the headphones on all the three contemporary smartphone operating systems of today having A2DP support: Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry. Do NOT tell me to publish a separate version of this article for these three operating systems because it’d cause me a lot of extra work. Just skip the rows in the chart not related to your particular OS.
HERE’S THE CHART - CLICK THE LINK!! Sorry, the chart is just too big to fit in here.
As can clearly be seen, there are no „best“ headphones, particularly if you require full Symbian compliance and/or the lack of blinking LED’s or dongles without (!!!) any desynchronization problems – these three things that MAY make the, in my opinion, best of the bunch, the 590 pretty much unappealing for people that do need these features. There is, however, a definitely worst one: the Cellink BTST-9000-D, which should be avoided at any rate – unless you want to use its dongle, which is far better than that of the Pulsar. All in all, you’ll need to carefully evaluate your needs, the platform you’re on, whether you plan to listen to the music a lot while you’re outdoors etc. There’re no “hard and fast” rules as to which of these headphones are the best for you.
For the time being, please consult my earlier reviews for more info on how this all should be interpreted. Start with, say, HERE.
I’ve updated the chart by adding the Moto HT820 and extending the info already available (for example, added a Verdict row). I seems I will only be able to publish the full roundup next week. In the meantime, check out and comment on the new chart.
Review posted to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=2252090