Pros: Takes a swishin’, and keeps on tickin’. Batteries last forever. Featureful. Fashionableish.
Cons: Very short range transceiver. Confusing operation. Glitchy pairing.
The Bottom Line: It's an okay headset. Use it with your mobile phone, (up and close) and you'll probably love it. Just don't wander. A good thing mobile phones are portable.
kfj001's Full Review: Motorola H500 Bluetooth Headset
Bluetooth headsets are pretty fancy looking pieces of hardware, but when it comes to features, functionality and all those other fun things – most Bluetooth devices are very similar.
This headset is very much a “generic Bluetooth headset”.
How it sounds
The sound quality of a Bluetooth headset is limited to telephone quality. The H500 is, once again, no exception. The transmitter and receiver array in this headset are totally integrated, so if your phone or computer are distant, or in noisy areas, your “tethered” to well under the 30 feet the Bluetooth standard proclaims its devices work at.
As long as you’re in range, and the devices signals aren’t obfuscated, you can expect clear telephone quality audio. Otherwise, you’ll hear the typical breakups and dropouts associated with “getting too far away.”
Unfortunately “too far away” is surprisingly close. Like 20 feet. The phone can even be in your pocket and the audio quality will begin to fuzz.
Battery Life
The headset battery often lasts longer than your mobile phone can talk for, which is a nice saving grace considering the audio quality.
The battery can easily do a 2 to 3 hour (straight) conversation without recharging, and still has juice left over. In fact, you can out talk your mobile phone using this headset.
Laptops and “handsfree speech programs” are often powered by wall current, so good luck outtalking that. Fortunately, either way you look at it, this headset will still work even after you’ve tired out your poor voice.
The headset rapidly charges using its USB miniplug port, and the provided wall charger. You can get a full charge on this sucker in about 90 minutes, then continue talking your blue face off.
Using it
Bluetooth devices need to be “bonded”, “connected” or “discovered” by one another. Now, the headset has no “user interface” per se, it’s got 3 buttons, two of which are the volume control.
Now, you have the following functionality (and only 3 buttons do ‘em all):
Answering calls
Making calls (using voice commands if your phone/computer supports it)
Putting a call on hold
Hanging up
Redialing
Muting & unmuting yourself
And the list goes on… you activate most of the features on this headset holding buttons down, hitting combinations of buttons, and tapping indivudal buttons at key moments. The combinations can be overwhelming sometimes, and I’ve redialed a call when all I wanted to do was check my voicemail, or cut off calls when I wanted to put them on hold…
The list goes on. In time, you might learn all the combo’s. You might not.
Pairing the headset with more than one device in its lifetime is a pain in the butt. The device keeps only one device “memorized” that it paired with. Also, repairing the headset between devices can fail randomly because of glitchy device firmware.
That’s before I dropped mine in the toilet, too.
At least making a call is generally as simple as pairing the thing, and dialing the phone.
Flushable!
Okay, you may have read, I dropped my headset in the toilet one day. The thing was sitting at the bottom of the bowl, soaked in water for a good 10 seconds before I fished it out.
Although it started out as “off”, the water connected the power, and the thing sprang to life…
In the bowl.
The device’s hardware is so low voltage, that the water didn’t fry the circuits, and the battery was spared by not being in the water too long.
But after drying the thing out, it worked just fine. So, bonus points for durability.
Summary
This headset does an awful lot with just 3 buttons. It’s battery lasts forever and the thing can take quite a beating.
However, the battery life is the product of a very weak transceiver array. The power saving features come at the cost of being able to wander away from your phone or PC. And even still, the headset audio quality drops even when your sitting on your phone (actually, it drops because your sitting on your phone.)
Motorola H500 Bluetooth Handsfree Headset Charger You are bidding on an excellent, Out of Box, New, Working Motorola H500 Bluetooth Handsfree Headset,...More at eBay
Type: Bluetooth HeadsetNoise Reduction: YesEar Coupling: Over the EarTalk Time: Up to 8 hoursStandby Time: Up to 130 hoursCharge Time: 1 HoursOperatin...More at Newegg.com
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