Tech: Jabra BT620s

I've wanted a bluetooth headphone for some time. Before my son steped on my E2 it was continuously pulled off me by the headphone wires. However, despite this compelling need the price for headphones (except when the Motorola headphones were on sale last Thanksgiving for $50) has been too high for my taste.

When I saw that Tiger had Jabra headphones for $30 I had to jump on it (this price was still good when I wrote the post). Note Tiger is a real company and I only have nice things to say about working with them. They don't do electronic rebates (like Stables) but these headphones don't need one.

I did of course check the reviews for example CNET which gave it a mixed rating. I think comfort has a lot to do with head size, or more specifically diameter. My head is tall and narrow and I have found these comfortable to wear for 4-6 hours (limited by available time not comfort). Note these are not light, they might not be very comfortable for jogging or other active endeavors. As to the hiss, at moderate volumes it is not obvious (but I am listening to rock, which tends not to have too many silent passages). The headband does not seem the most robust, I'll keep you updated on that.

One thing you will find is that several people complain of sound quality. You must pair these as stereo headphones. When properly connected for music you should see "Jabra BT620s Stereo-headset" if you connect as "Jabra BT620s Hands-Free unit" then you will get lousy sound. Bluetooth is awesome, I can get pretty far from the computer ~30feet and still have reception. The stream is either there or not, it does not degrade smoothly. Note if you leave a computer playing and get out of range you computer may default to playing with the speaker (potentially embarrassing at work).

On a laptop with an IO gear adapter I get excellent performance (the headphones stay alive even under very heavy CPU utilization). On my home machine they don't work, with exactly the same bluetooth adapter. I'll update with what the problem is when I find it.


Just today I got them paired with my shiny new TX. To do so you need a program, audio gateway from Softick. This appears to be the ONLY A2DP bluetooth profile for Palm OS. The good news is that this worked flawlessly. It also made me a little happier that the E2 was squished because apparently it does not have the horsepower to drive the headphone profile at high quality. The negative is that blutooth sucks the battery down. I got about 4 hours of MP3 time.








An obvious question is how well do these headphones work with a bluetooth phone. Well the sad answer is I currently don't have one. So, until I get one that test will have to wait.


Jabra BT620s
Plusses

• Reasonable price
• Pairs with computer/tx/laptop/phone (sure it will work)
• Simple interface
• Good battery life
• Much cleaner sound than RF style headphones

Deltas

• A little heavy, but I have not tested the Motorolas

Overall, a purchase that was well worth the cost.