Headphones & Headsets In The Works

I’ve been thinking a lot about headsets and headphones lately. This comes to be for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I left my favorite headset for listening to music in a coworkers car, and I don’t think I’m getting them back. Secondly, my favorite cell phone headset is very aged, and near death. Finally, I’ve been needing to upgrade the headset hardware that I use for telephony to better address my increasing use of wideband telephony. That has both desk-bound and portable aspects to be considered.

So I decided that I’d try a bunch of headsets of various sorts and see what I found the most appealing. This got started last December my wife bought me a Plantronics .Audio 480 headset as a gift. I’ve been using it quite a bit and I’m just about done with a written review of my experience using that device.

Then a while back I started making some inquires about wideband capable headsets for telephony. Plantronics responded by sending me a couple of things to try; a simple USB connected headset and a more sophisticated Bluetooth rig. As I’ve been traveling a lot the past couple of months I haven’t had a chance to use these much yet, but I plan on getting to know them well and documenting my experience.

Then, from the music and cell phone perspective, I’ve ordered some new hardware from Etymotic. I’ve been using Etymotic ER-6i’s for listening to music for a couple of years, having graduated to them from Sony MDR-NC series noise canceling earbuds.

I suspect that this will evolve into a series of posts over the next few months. As new or different hardware comes to my attention I my expand the scope of my search, hoping to find the ideal item for each application.