Great Bluetooth Headset (Plantronics Explorer 370)

Member Name: grovenet

Product:	Plantronics Explorer 370
Date:	10/09/09 (3 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Call Clarity, Battery Life, Aesthetics

Disadvantages: none really

I bought this for £33.33 from Amazon. I've never been a fan of Bluetooth headsets, after a bought a couple of cheap and nasty ones a few years ago. They were very fiddly to setup and the buttons were too small.

This one, however, is very very easy to use, and has the one big button (above the blue LED in the picture) plus two nice chunky round volume up and down buttons on the side (you can just about see them in the picture)

I paired my headset with my new Blackberry Curve 8900 and it was a piece of cake to setup. Press the button on the headset so it starts flashing, tell the phone to search for devices, enter the default 0000 passcode for the headset into the phone and you're done!

I've used it for half a dozen phone calls so far and have made a point of asking the other end about how clear my voice is. Not a bad word so far, with everyone saying I sound clearer than when I'm just using the phone!

My Blackberry has voice dialling, which the headset can make use of. Press the big button until it bleeps in your ear .. that triggers the phone's voice dialling thing. Then I just say "Phone Home" and it does it! Great! Proper hands-free for when in the car!

The headset comes in the usual copious amounts of plastic packaging - the stuff that needs scissors or a kitchen knife to break into! You'll get the headset and a mains charger (it's a micro USB connector so I can use my Blackberry charger (I think! I haven't checked the voltages but hey, it fits!)

You also get a thing to go around your neck (is it called a Lanyard?) It's like a long bootlace, it goes around your neck and connects to the headset. So if you're not going to use the headset for a while just take it off your ear and stuff it down your shirt on the bootlace!

My previous headsets had shocking battery life, but this one seems great - although out of habit, I stick everything on charge overnight these days - phones, headset, camera etc.

My ears aren't the smallest in the world (understatement!) but I find this very comfortable - to the point that I can forget it's there sometimes. The curved plastic ear-hook swivels around so you can use either ear, and it's easy to swap from left to right. My previous headsets had to be dismantled to swap ears, with different hooks for left and right .. none of that with this baby though.

It's not the cheapest headset, but far from the most expensive. It's a nice mid-range unit, and the quality is great. Plantronics are a huge player in the office telephone headset market - call centres etc. - so they should know how to make a bluetooth earpiece .. which is why I chose their brand.

Highly recommended!

Summary: A decent step up from the budget earpiece, but it won't break the bank!