Jabra BT620s Bluetooth Headphones
By Staff reporters
Headphones are finally intelligent devices, able to connect you wirelessly to more than one device. To start with, the latest models all use Bluetooth technology to deliver your stereo wireless audio experience. Because of this, they can be connected to mobile phones, PCs with a Bluetooth adapter built-in or connected via USB, to regular audio devices with a 3.5mm headphone socket through a special Bluetooth adapter and directly to mp3 players with a built-in Bluetooth connection (none of which are yet on the market, but which are rumoured to be coming in future iPods and other clones).
They also come with control buttons, used to turn the volume up and down, and on compatible devices, do things such as pause the music, fast forward, rewind and go backwards and forwards through your tracks. Then there’s the answer/hang up button that lets you send and end phone calls.
I’m sure you’re wondering – where is the microphone? It’s built into the side of the headphones, facing downwards towards your mouth. Yes, there’s a distance between your mouth and the microphone, but clever digital signal processing (DSP) technology helps overcome the distance to allow the microphone to clearly pick up your voice.
You can even use them to make Skype phone calls, if you’ve paired the unit to your desktop or notebook PC through its inbuilt Bluetooth adapter, or one that you’ve added via USB (as we mentioned earlier).
An excellent usage scenario is using the headphones with one of the latest mp3 playing mobiles. The headphones play the music from your mp3 player, and when a call comes through, the music stops and you press the answer button to take the call. When you’re finished talking, you press the same button, and the music starts again from where it stopped. Most impressive!
If your phone has the latest A2DP Bluetooth profile, you can also control the music with the buttons on the headphones while your phone is safely in your pocket.
Another is using it (with an optional 3.5mm headphone Bluetooth adapter) to listen to your iPod or other specific mp3 player, while having it simultaneously paired with your phone. The calls come through, and you press the button – but because the adaptor goes through a 3.5mm headphone socket, you’ll have to manually pause the music; otherwise when the call ends you’ll be listening to wherever your player is after however long your phone call took.
If you don’t like this style of headphones, Jabra also has a set with ‘earbuds’ that plug into your ears in the style of iPod headphones, while connecting to a Bluetooth unit so you still retain the benefits of a wireless solution.
This is one of the first of the next wave of intelligent Bluetooth headphones – we’ll be looking at others soon! :-)
Alex Zaharov-Reutt
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on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 1:13 am
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