How to Buy a Bluetooth Headset

Let's get this straight first. There's no "set" in the Bluetooth headsets we're about to look at. They don't come in twos. Rather, they are single-ear earpieces designed to rely on Bluetooth technology to establish a wireless connection between the earpiece and your Bluetooth device (phone, PDA, camera, and more). Bluetooth headsets range in price, design, comfort, and features. Because they let you hear the sound in one ear they are better suited to voice phone calls than listening to music.

Because we often buy them online, we need to visualize how a particular model will work and think about how we're planning on using the device in order to make the best choice. Here's a quick guide to the highlights you should be evaluating before you buy.

Price: Bluetooth headsets come in an astounding variety of prices, ranging from about $30 to $300. Typically the smaller they are, and the more bells and whistles (like noise cancellation) they have, the more expensive they'll be.

Comfort: Ears come in lots of sizes; earpieces often do not. It's tough to judge how something is going to feel before you try it on, but there are some clues you can glean from design.

First, there's no such thing as a truly comfortable Bluetooth headset, but some are more comfortable than others. Second, there are two basic design variations. In-ear designs are based on small buds that fit inside your ear. Over ear designs use loops or other types of grips to affix themselves to your ear.

After wearing them for awhile the in-ear versions start to feel like you're permanently swabbing your ear with a Q-tip. The over ear versions can feel like dangling earrings gone awry. In-ear headsets are smaller and more difficult to locate if for example you store them in your handbag.

Boom vs. No Boom: A boom is a small stick microphone attachment protruding from the headset. (See photo of the Plantronics headset.) Some headsets have multiple booms for windy conditions or for different sized people. If you talk in noisy areas consider a boom.

Noise Cancellation: Some of the more expensive Bluetooth headsets employ noise reduction or noise cancellation technologies to eliminate background noise. Typically these technologies take the form of software algorithms built into the headset. You'll pay more for noise cancellation, but if you do a lot of city-street calling it may be money well spent.

Current Standard: Bluetooth is a standard that's evolved over time. The current state of the art is version 2.0, which is a faster, more power-efficient standard than those before it. A newer update, Version 2.1, makes it even simpler to pair devices and offers further power conservation. You'll pay fire sale prices for older Bluetooth 1.0 headsets, but the first generation of Bluetooth devices was more problematic. Better to buy current Version 2.0 or higher.

Easy Pairing: One of the advantages of wireless technology is that you don't need to bother with getting the right plug attachment to wire your phone to your headset. You can also pair a single Bluetooth headset with multiple phones. Pairing involves telling your headset and your device to talk to each other. Once they are paired, the two remember each other's unique names and connect every time; mates for life until you decide to unpair them. Since Bluetooth is a standard most phones work with most Bluetooth headsets, but there are exceptions. Check the companies web sites for compatible pairings. There's some good information and a video on how to pair devices on the Bluetooth.com.

Control and Button Placement: To conserve batteries, your Bluetooth device typically stays on standby mode; you turn it on when you're alerted that a call is coming in. The smaller the earpiece, the smaller the user-activated buttons for accepting an incoming call alert. This gets to be a problem for the less dexterous, more fat-fingered among us, especially because you need to connect quickly before a caller gives up. I know that I'm forever searching for the on-button, often accidentally dislodging the fragilely secured earpiece from my ear in the process. There's a tradeoff between the size of the device and the difficulty of locating the on- button when you need it.

Battery Life: Bluetooth earpieces are small and that means small batteries. Typically you're getting between two and 10 hours of talk time and about 25 to 250 hours of standby time. The big problem is that the possibility of not getting a call because you're out of batteries doubles. For me, at any given moment, it's a near guarantee that one of these two gadgets will be running low on batteries. If you talk a lot or depend on your phone, go for a headset with a bit more weight and size in exchange for longer battery life.

Will you wear it or store it? I keep my headset in my pocketbook along with my phone, so you can imagine the frenetic scene when the phone rings. First I need to find the headset and push it into my ear. Then I need to find the phone. By the time I get past the lipstick, tissue, hairbrush, and pen on my wild goose chase, the caller is long gone. For me, the tinier the device, the harder it is to find. Those of you who wear the device or carry it in a pocket may have an easier time.

Wear glasses? A few of the devices work better for glasses wearers. Look at the over ear devices with interchangeable loops. A few devices offer special glasses clips.

In my next post we'll look at a few examples of new Bluetooth devices so you can apply the principles.