EarWave Boom, 2.5mm

Rating:
Summary: Too much static
Review: I recently purchased this item because of the high user ratings but it was ineffective when driving on the highway. I'm thinking the mouthpiece is too far away when there is heavy traffic. It worked fine for the first few days and then listeners kept telling me they couldn't hear me because of the static. I stopped using it. It was very comfortable though. So if you do rural driving primarily, maybe this does warrant a high rating.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Over-the-Ear Mini
Review: I've had about a dozen different headsets for cell phones in the last decade. This one is by far the best. It weighs almost nothing, the sound is clear and loud, and the microphone -- from what people tell me -- is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Over-the-Ear Mini
Review: I've had about a dozen different headsets for cell phones in the last decade. This one is by far the best. It weighs almost nothing, the sound is clear and loud, and the microphone -- from what people tell me -- is excellent.

Rating:
Summary: awesome sound quality
Review: It's amazing the sound quality considering that when you have this thing over your ear, the "mouth" piece is a lot closer to your ear than it is to your mouth. I made a call right after I bought it and the person on the other end could not tell I was using a hands free device.

Like all Jabra hands-free ear gizmos, this one comes with a variety of gel-like ear inserts for different shaped ears and for those who want to use the gizmo on their left ears instead of the right.

My less than perfect rating is the less-than flexible adjustment for the piece that goes around the ear. It's a snug fit, to be sure, but a little too snug. After a recent lengthy phone call, my ear was so fatigued from being squeezed for so long, it gave me a headache. There is no way to take the snug tension down a notch. I have normal size ears, not circus ears, so I'm not just complaining for the sake of it.

The gel-like insert feels great - but it's the over-the-ear gizmo that is doing the pinching. It's almost like wearing 4lb clasp earrings or something. It really takes two hands to put this thing on, too.

The quality in hearing conversations is also excellent. There is the most subtle of echoes in both receiving and sending, but it is barely detectable. My phone has an excellent hands-free speaker built-in, but a hands-free device is essential when you want privacy and don't want to hold your phone up to your ear for an hour.

Rating:
Summary: Fair performance, comfortable, but not quite "it"
Review: My Jabra ProBoom died a terrible death in my briefcase when the ear clip was snapped off. The ProBoom was out of stock, so I ordered this EarWave Boom. I actually plugged this EarWave Boom into one ear, the ProBoom into the other ear, and did some head-to-head testing.

First, on this EarWave Boom, I can say that it's a very comfortable headset. The part that fits in your ear uses a new "mini gel" form factor that is less, well, convoluted than the ear gels that the other Jabra headsets have used. Definitely more comfortable as it makes less contact with the ear, but the flip side is you lose a bit of the noise-proofing that comes with the traditional ear gels. Also, I think that this new design is easier to get on and off than the ProBoom, but it's also a different motion.

The sound quality of the speaker was on a par with the ProBoom, but the volume was lower. I had to crank the volume nearly all the way up in a quiet environment, and had to turn it all the way up in a car just to get to "acceptable" volume. The old ProBoom, on the other hand, has volume to spare - and I'm not even using its active amplification feature. I'm using a Treo 600, so your mileage may vary with your phone.

The sound quality on the microphone on this EarWave Boom was just a *bit* less clear than the ProBoom. Of course, that may be expected given that the ProBoom puts a microphone just a centimeter or so from your mouth. The noise cancelling seemed to work as advertised in a car, although I got a couple people commenting that I was a little "muffled" sounding.

In the end, it's a very comfortable headset, but its speaker sound volume and microphone clarity are just a tad behind the ProBoom. In spite of having to wait for it, I'm going to go ahead and order another ProBoom, but I'll keep this EarWave Boom in my briefcase as a spare in case of another accident.

..Chris..


Rating:
Summary: Caution
Review: The part where it says:"For all phones with a standard 2.5mm headset input" I guess "all" in this case means all 2.5mm inputs except for Nokia phone's 2.5mm inputs