I've broken two now (both the very small ones) and lost one, a cheapy that looked ugly, so time for another. Here's the current reviews and some good choices, one for car and another for portable use from The Travel Insider" and Design Technica. Newegg carries most of these now and you can see what is popular at Pricegrabber
- Parrot Easydrive. This is a good solution for in your car. It is a speakerphone that plugs into the cigarette lighter (of course for me I have my Tendeck for my ipod plugged into it, so a little issue, OK for cars with more than one DC input like our MDX). $100. It is supposed to have good sound quality and is way safer IMHO. Pricegrabber has it for about $85.
- AiZen FlyBy. This seems like a good compromise. Great sound quality and also USB charger and no hook, so not super nerdy. $50, but hard to find anywhere from a Taiwan startup.
- Motorola HS 850. I like my headsets small, but alhtough this one is large and streets at $80, the main thing is that it has good sound quality. It uses a V60 input, so if you have a cell phone to USB kit (like me), it means you don't need a different charger. Hurray! It has a boom mike which makes sound quality better and opening the mike is how you turn it on. Note that Legit Reviews said it worked great with the RAZR but not with the Treo 650 and Design Technica didn't like it all though and rated it 4.5/10 by users. Laptop like these 3.5/5 because it had good noise cancelling although the maximum volume could be higher.
- Plantronics Discovery 640. This is the high end version and got 5/5 from Consumerguide. $80. It is just 9 grams which is nice.
- Gennum nXZEN PLUS. This is a pretty small device and it has good sound quality apparently. It is DSP powered and is quite expensive at $130 at Pricegrabber. It does have a stereo feature so you can listen to stereo over bluetooth (not super useful IMHO). However, Laptop Magazine didn't like it (3/5 stars) because voice quality was eratic and it wasn't super intuitive to use.
- Plantronic Explorer 320. Laptop magazine liked this one 3.5/5 mainly because of good volume and high sound quality. Nerdly looking though but it is cheap at $30.
- Bluetake BT400 G5. It is only $40 and as nerdy as the Motorola, but it is just $50 so a little cheaper. It is OK in quality. Laptop Magazine gave it 3/5 and said sound quality was just OK, but it is cheap.
Here are some close also rans:
- Aizen FlyBy Bluetooth Headset review. Like my first headset, they use a USB charger but have a proprietary cable (too bad). Only $50 and butt ugly, but the main problem is poor microphone quality.
- Sony Ericsson Akono. This is a pretty headset, but while clear, it is not super loud. $70 street. Laptop Magazine said it had good sound quality but wasn't worth the price 2.5/5.
