Bose Bluetooth Headset

Bose is known for its attention to comfort and design, for excellent noise cancellation technology, and for charging a premium. The new Bose Bluetooth Headset ($149.95 direct) is both comfortable and expensive, but its middling noise cancellation and a price tag that's 50 percent higher than the Editors' Choice Aliph Jawbone Icon ($99.99, 4 stars) and the excellent Plantronics Voyager Pro+ ($99.99, 4 stars) make this Bluetooth headset a tough sell.

Design

The Bose Bluetooth Headset is a tiny trapezoid that's hardly bigger than a AA battery. The headset measures .7 by 1.8 by 1.3 inches (HWD), and weighs .48 ounces. It's mostly black, with a silver line running around the edges and a silver Bose logo on the front. Volume controls and a large button for initiating and ending calls sit on top of the headset. The power slider is on the bottom, a welcome change from headsets that require holding the call button for various amounts of time to turn on and off. Buttons were easy to press and easy to distinguish from one another, and I never hung up a call while trying to turn up the volume.

On the back of the headset are LED lights for battery status and Bluetooth connection status. The battery light flashes green, yellow, or red, depending on the power remaining.

In the package with the Bose Bluetooth headset are a carrying case for the headset, a USB charger and wall adapter, and small, medium and large tips for your ears. The tips may be different sizes, but they've got one thing in common: they're all for your right ear. The Bose Bluetooth Headset only works in your right ear, and Bose gave no indication that it planned to release a lefty version.

Connecting, Comfort and Extras

Pairing the Bose Bluetooth Headset, which I did with a Samsung Fascinate and an iPhone 4, is incredibly simple. By pressing and holding the Call button for about five seconds, I got the blue Bluetooth light on the Headset to blink slowly, which means it's in pairing mode—both phones found it immediately and paired in seconds.

The Bose headset doesn't show its battery life in the iPhone's status bar, like competing Aliph and Plantronics products do, and it doesn't have apps like the Jawbone or built-in voice commands like high-end BlueAnt products.

On the other hand, this is the single most comfortable and secure Bluetooth headset I have ever tried. Bose uses the same StayHear tips that are on the IE2 earphones ($99, 4 stars), which fit inside the inner portion of your ear. There's no pressing anything into your ear canal, or awkwardly hanging something over your ear. It sits snugly and securely, and though it felt like it might fall out since it feels so loose, it never did. For road warriors who will get hours of use from their Bluetooth headset every day, the Bose is uniquely ear-friendly.

Quality and Performance

Voice quality with the earpiece was good, but not as good as either the Voyager Pro or the Jawbone Icon. The Voyager Pro was warmer and louder, and the Icon was clearer.

Bose touts two specific features for its headset. First is its ability to automatically adjust volume on both ends, so that whether you're in a quiet room or a noisy crowd, you'll hear and be heard equally well. (Plantronics calls their version of this technology Audio IQ.) In my tests, Bose's adaptive volume control worked surprisingly well. I began a call indoors, and then walked out the door and down the street in midtown Manhattan, and I could hear and be heard the entire time. I could occasionally hear the volume adjusting as noise levels changed, but volume as the caller heard it stayed mostly consistent.

Bose's other flagship feature is noise cancellation, and that was less impressive. Noise was certainly diminished, but callers could hear when I was in a windy spot, or if there was significant background noise around me. When driving with the windows down at 50mph, I was able to hear and be heard, but the caller heard the wind as well.

Battery life, at 5 hours and 10 minutes of talk time, is terrific for such a small headset (Bose also rates it at 175 hours of standby time, which is over a week). Larger headsets like the Motorola Endeavor HX1 (4 stars) get even longer life, but for its size the Bose's performance is excellent. Range was good as well—I could walk about 20 feet away before the audio began to noticeably degrade.

The Bose Bluetooth Headset is a solid headset; it's long-lasting, supremely comfortable, and works well. But for $149.99, I expected either more features or better sound performance. The Aliph Jawbone Icon remains our Editors' Choice for Bluetooth headsets both for its class-leading noise cancellation and its feature-expanding app ecosystem—not to mention its $99 price tag. [source]