Review – Jabra Halo

Finding a good bluetooth headset can be a difficult task.  There are so many things that can make or break the experience.  Finding a good stereo headset is even more difficult.  Not only do you need to worry about call quality,  but comfort becomes more important as it is worn more, battery life, and music quality.  The Jabra Halo is my most recent attempt to find a headset I like.

Specs/Info

• Cost: $129
• Talk/Music time: 8 hours
• Charge time: 2 hours
• Standby Time: 8 days
• Paired Devices: 8 remembered, 2 paired at a time.

General Pairing/First Impressions

The Jabra Halo is a very nice looking headset as far as these go.  The box comes with the headset, an AC charger, a very small USB charger, a carrying case, and an adapter to let you plug in standard 3.5mm devices.  Although it is hard to tell from the pic, the inside of the headset is covered in felt and it is very comfortable.  The earpieces raise and lower and it fits well.  They can be worn for an extended period of time without discomfort.  When I pulled them out of the box I was a little confused about the folding, which is the fatal weakness of this headset (more info on this later).  The headset has two hinges that allow it to fold.  When in the usable state, you have to pull the headset at the joint firmly until it snaps and then fold it.  Unsnapping the side with the buttons is what shuts down the headset.  The amount of force required to snap and unsnap the sides into place isn't excessive, but it did leave me feeling a little uncomfortable.  The phone paired very nicely with my Pre, although the headset doesn't make any beeps or other signals to let you know when it pairs.  Often my phone wouldn't actually be connected when it said it was, and I'd have to unsnap the side to power it off and snap it back to power it on and then it would work.  If left unused for over an hour or so without using it, the headset would sometimes stop working without repeating that process again.  It wasn't a huge issue, but it was a minor annoyance at times.

Controls

I had some mixed feelings about the controls.  On the one hand, all the controls worked perfectly.  After my first headset that would allow me to stop music from the headset, but not start it, or had other features that didn't work as expected, I was relieved that this worked perfectly.  Starting and stopping the phone uses a large recessed button on the side.  On the other hand, the volume and FF/RW was just a spot on the corner that you touch to activate.  It was very easy to accidentally raise or lower the volume when trying to turn music on or off.  Not a huge issue, but again, it was a minor annoyance at times.

Call/Music Quality

From the viewpoint of call quality, the Halo performs quite well.  No one I called was able to hear excessive background noise or was able to tell I was on a headset.  It was easy to go from music to phone and back again and the volume was good in the headset.  No complaints in this area for me.  I'm no audiophile, but the sound quality for music was very good as well.  The volume wasn't as high as other headsets I've tried, but this is probably because the headset doesn't fit in the ear or block any outside noises, so it gets muffled a bit.  When listening to an audiobook in the car I had to turn the volume to maximum, but it was loud enough to clearly hear despite.  I think that a little more volume would have made it perfect.  It has a reasonable range as far as music goes.  It isn't too tinny, although it could use just a little more bass at times.

Misc

The battery life was very good.  I could make it through the day without needing to recharge it.  The specs claim 8 hours of music or talk time, which seems about right.  For my purposes, that was enough to listen to music/audiobooks throughout the day on and off and not run out of battery.  A very heavy user might, but not an average or light user.  The slim nature of this headset makes it comfortable to listen to in bed, even if I was laying on my side.   The main problem with this headset is the hinges for the headset.  Without a power button, I found that when I was having pairing issues I was having to snap the hinges in and out a fair bit, and with more use, they started to weaken.  Too much pressure on the side of the hinge would snap it out of the hinge in a bad way.  It is hard to apply enough pressure while it is being worn, but not when you have it off.  for a $120 headset, this is a pretty big issue for me.  The more the hinges popped when they shouldn't, the easier it got for them to do it again.  It might not be a big issue for some people, but it bothered me.

The Good

• Good sound quality
• Comfortable
• Great battery life
• Controls all work well

The Bad

• Doesn't stay paired when idle for a long time
• No sound to indicate proper pairing
• Easy to accidentally hit volume
• Very bad design with the hinges for folding

My rating:

7.5/10

If it weren't for the bad hinges I would have rated it an 8.5 or 9