SE HBH-65 Headset

[Rob Parker]

I got the Sony Ericsson HBH-65 Bluetooth headset as a Christmas gift 
and have put it through a pretty good workout in the last week. It's 
a nice piece of technology and it's more comfortable to wear than I 
thought it would be, but I'm finding it a bit clumsy with regard to 
call handling. The manual is rather cryptic.

If the headset it turned on, I haven't figured out how to just use 
the phone and ignore the headset. I'm sure there's an easy way to 
switch calls between the headset and handset, but I'm finding this 
aspect difficult to tackle.

Another thing that annoys me is the way you turn the headset on and 
off. The on/off button is hard to see in sunlight and hard to hear in 
a noisy environment. I'd much rather have a switch of some sort so 
it's obvious when the thing is on and when it's off. In bright 
daylight it's nearly impossible to see the little green blinking 
strobe.

The '+' button for adjusting the volume is very difficult to press 
without also pressing the '-' button at the same time. Both buttons 
require quite a bit of pressure to activate. I'd like to see them 
softened up a little.

Call quality has been decent I guess. Probably as good as any other 
headset that  has that stubby design. In a noisy environment, 
however, the party I was talking to was having a really difficult 
time hearing me even though I could hear him quite well.

I was a bit disappointed to learn that I can't use the headset while 
I've got the Salling Clicker active on my PowerBook. :(

A couple nice things to report...

The volume on the HBH-65 can be very loud if you want it to be. It's 
designed to sit above your ear canal, not directly inside it. This 
allows you to hear your surrounding environment very well, even while 
listening to music in the car. Most other mobile phone headsets 
obstruct your ear canal, requiring the audiophile to remove it for 
critical music listening. ;-) No so with the HBH-65.

I found it comfortable to wear on car trips of around 1.5 hours. I 
always know it's there but it isn't painful for me at all. Of course, 
ear shapes are very different from person to person, so your mileage 
may vary.  I didn't have a chance to wear it on longer trips, but 
perhaps I will in the near future. I didn't try it with sunglasses 
but since it hooks over the top of either ear, I imagine that it's 
not usable at all with any kind of eye wear.

Battery life seems pretty good, but you definitely have to keep it 
topped off every day if you do a lot of calling. I wasn't aware that 
it came with two chargers in the box. One regular AC travel charger, 
and one car charger. These both work with my Z600 as well. Nice!


best--

Rob Parker