QuickLook - Plantronics Discovery 925 BT Headset

Posted by: Brandon Steili on Jul 03 2008

Here we are … another fine day at JAMM, and today seems like a pretty good day to take a look at what has quickly become my favorite Bluetooth headsets. I’m not going to make this a long review, because frankly I don’t think it needs it. Why? Because its a Bluetooth headset. Most of the key talking points around these devices have been covered over and over again … things like do I really need one, will I look like a Star Trek geek, are people going to think I’m taking to myself, and of course topics like should there be a law requiring these things.

So in the interest of not tossing out an entire holiday weekend (and missing a beautiful day outside/Happy 4th) I’m going to keep this one short and to the point, again because the talking points have been covered, but more importantly I personally think once you’ve tried the Discovery 925 - you’re either going to absolutely love it, or you’re going to just feel sort of "meh" about the whole thing. You can go ahead and put me in that first category. So lets get started.

 

Style, comfort and the like

So, the first you’re going to notice about this headset - aside from the pure elegant style of the black and silver - is that there’s no ear loop and there’s a pretty massive looking rubber thingy on the earpiece. Like so:

Something else you may notice from a lot of prior BT headset reviews is that 9 times out of ten you see a bunch of pictures of the device laying on a table and not a single one of those has an earpiece hook either… until you see a picture of the reviewer … and there’s that dreaded loop. So in the spirit of proving that I didn’t need one, here you go:

Yes, you read that right. I didn’t need an earpiece loop for the first time in a sizeable history of headset reviews. The closest I ever came was the MiniBlu and I still had to use one with it. So, right there you have the main thing that makes the Plantronics Discovery 925 absolutely stand out wonderful in my mind … the tiny size (8 grams / .25 oz) that makes this device 100% stable in your ear WITHOUT a loop. I even did a Doug test which bout gave a heart attack … but I did a whole 25 jumping jacks and this thing didn’t move a millimeter. Needless to say, I was very impressed. Team that with the fact that you can use it in either ear simply by pulling it out and putting it into the opposite ear without any other changes, and you’ve got a winner.

But, now I bet your mind is wandering to how comfortable can it really be if it has to fit into your ear and not use any kind of outside support to hold it in place. I bet you’re thinking its got to be uncomfy just due to the pressure required to hold it. Well, you’d be wrong. No joke, I walked around the house for a good 5 minutes one day before heading out to work wondering where the heck I had put the thing. Now, you can call it morning drowsiness, lack of coffee, or whatever … but yes it was in my ear the whole time. The 925 is seriously that comfortable. Its not like anything else I’ve used.

Ease of Use

I’m not going to beat this topic to death. If you’ve used one BT headset with your current device you know that most times setup is a non-event, and its no different with the Discovery 925. Pairing is simple, access code is the standard 0000, and accessing pairing mode is the typical "from off press and hold" process.

Once connected, the 925 did an excellent job of staying that way. Overall distance is rated at 30+ feet, but I would count on a solid 20 before you start to notice some degradation in the quality of sound. If you do go out of range, once you’re back in range a simple press of the big ol’ Plantronics icon and you’re connected back up. Super simple.

Sound quality on my side was great. I’ve rarely had such good quality coming into my ear … with one minor issue … wind noise is atrocious. If there’s one thing that bugged me to no end it was how wind noise would show up on my side of the conversation. I never got any complaints from the party on the other end, but there was a couple times in a good breeze where the wind would resound through the earpiece and make it hard to hear the conversation.  Now, it is important to note a couple of these times I asked if the other person could hear the noise and it was always a solid "no". So, I’ve learned to live with it since the other person isn’t complaining. Doesn’t mean I like though.

Overall however, sound quality was excellent. Most ambient noise was filtered pretty well through the AudioIQ technology, but if it was loud enough to equal my voice level it did go through without being filtered. Perfect example being my car stereo a couple times when I answered while driving. I typically have the radio pretty loud so I can’t really fault the technology too much since it did go away once I turned the radio down past a dull roar. Better way to sum this up - don’t plan on going to a Nascar event and having a business conference call because they’re gonna know. Sum up: AudioIQ = meh.

Finally, Multipoint Technology is also a very cool feature of this device and one which I took a lot of joy in using. Why? My wife hates using my iPhone… so if we need to make an outbound call to someone and we both plan on talking to whomever we’re calling, without fail we’re using her RAZR. The nice part about this is once you’ve done the setup the 925 is smart enough to know which phone you’re calling out on and will turn on for that phone. Switch back to using the first phone and the 925 switches back. Very cool bit of technology and I can’t wait for it to become something that’s standard on every device. (note: multipoint is not on by default to save battery life. See the manual for instructions how to set it up.)

Power

Everyone’s favorite topic right? How long can I use it before I have to put it away and use the phone like it was meant to be. Well I found the rated 5 hours to be fairly accurate. Or to be more accurate - I never ran out of juice. I think the most time I spent on the phone on any given day was about 3.5 hours and honestly my iPhone was more ready to take a nap than the 925 was. Charge times run about 3 hours, which I really can’t confirm because I charged it overnight.

One VERY nice thing that Plantronics did was send along a handy little portable charging unit for you super yackers. Yup … what I thought was a carry case the first time I opened the packaging turned out to be a handy little leather wrapped USB charging case! The charging case does an excellent job, and manages to somehow dump a full charge worth of juice into the 925 in a rated 3 hours, so if you got the minutes … you get an extra 5 hours of talk time. But it comes at a price as the charging case takes a whopping 9 hours to refill if you plug it into a USB port, 3 if you plug it into AC.

Wrap-up

Alright … well the quick look turned into a bit of a ramble on. Sorry about that, but it tends to happen when I’m really passionate about something … and the Discovery 925 is definitely one of them. Of all the headsets I’ve gone through, I have to say the 925 is the best one so far. Its an incredibly comfortable device, one I don’t mind keeping in my ear even when I’m not on the phone. The call quality was quite good… although not up to the level of something like a Jawbone. I could ramble on about the inclusion of the charging case, multipoint technology, color, power, controls and all that stuff all day long… but what really makes the 925 stand out in my mind is that it is very, very comfortable to use and for me that’s one of the biggest selling points of all. So, in short if you’re looking for a stylish device that doesn’t need an ear loop, is comfortable enough to wear all day long, and you’re not too worried about perfectionist sound quality … the Plantronics Discovery is definitely one to put on the short list.

Quick Info

Price: $149

5 Hours Talk Time / 7 days standby

AudioIQ & Multipoint Technology built-in

Rechargeable Case

8 grams / .25oz

Available now from Plantronics

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!