End-user perspective on small office tools & technology

New Gear: Plantronics Voyager Pro HD

You may recall that in the spring of 2011 I reviewed the Plantronics Voyager Pro UC Bluetooth cordless headset. Even after it was replaced around the office by the Sennheiser DW Pro2 this little Bluetooth headset was a welcome travelling companion. That is, until our younger Labrador chewed it to bits a few months back.

At the time of the unfortunate incident I wasn’t exactly flush with cash so I decided to make due with the wired headset that came with my Galaxy Nexus. That headset has proven irksome. Last week I was compelled to order a new Plantronics Voyager Pro HD .

Occasionally manufacturers will provide sample gear for evaluation. While I might write a positive review about such a device, nothing underscores that opinion like spending from my own pocket to replace the when it’s lost. Such is the case with this headset.

Hopefully, in the coming week or two I can find some time to setup the Gigaset DX800A and find out if the VP HD handles HDVoice calls as well as the VP UC.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. I’d be very interested to know how they can boast “HD” without support for HFP 1.6. As far as I can tell, that’s the only bluetooth standard covering wideband speech. If A2DP is their only basis, they deserve a proper excoriation. Streaming music is old, old news.

    1. In use with my cell phone it’s been impossible to tell if it was handling HD for voice use.

      The A2DP certainly works well enough. In fact, compared to the combination of my old G2 & VP UC the Galaxy Nexus & VP HD pair doesn’t clip the initial audio in turn-by-turn navigation instructions. I expect that more to do with improvements in Android than the headset.
      I installed the Plantronics My Headset applet for Andriod, which includes a voice note recorder. A sample recording made using that app was only sampled at 8 KHz, so definitely narrowband.

      I then recorded a sample using the Soundcloud app for Android. That recording was sampled at 44.1 KHz and in stereo. Loaded to Adobe Audition 2.0 it very clearly shows energy beyond 4 KHz. Definitely in HDVoice. 

      When I get some time I’ll post some supporting documentation later on.

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