Jabra BT500 Reviews - Design, Battery, Sound, Compatibility

Design

The Jabra BT500 is now much lighter and thinner than its predecessor (by about 30%), the FreeSpeak bluetooth headset. Weighing at about 0.68 ounces (19 grams), the headset will fit behind your ears with ease and comfort. What's more, Jabra has attached a new convenience feature into this headset. It's called the Mini-Gel.

The purpose of the Mini Gel is to provide clear and crisp sounds when you are using the phone, as well as reduce background noise coming in. It fits in behind your ear easily, without much trouble. You can activate the headset by pressing the Answer button found on the unit. To end the session, press End. Volume of the headset can be upped or reduced by a slider.

The LED display will tell you about the battery power and charge levels. The status modes that are displayed include:

- Off
- Active
- Standby
- Mute
- Low-Battery
- Office Mode

Battery

The battery life of the Jabra BT500 headset has been significantly improved than its predecessors. Jabra claims the maximum talk time is 8 hours and standby time of upto 240 hours (about 10 days). You need to give it atleast 2 hours to fully charge up the battery.

Sound

The sound quality of the Jabra BT500 is pretty loud and good. Thanks to the built in Mini-Gel which helps in reducing background noise, the headset is even more louder. The maximum range for this Bluetooth 1.2 headset is 33 feet. If you carry around the headset in extremely windy/rain conditions, you might experience some turbulence, but it is still not too bad.

Jabra has not built in a vibration feature to the bt500 headset. This is actually good because the vibration alert can get pretty annoying. You don't want the headset to vibrate and tickle your ear, when an incoming call is received! The battery performance is thus improved, due to the lack of this feature.

Compatibility

The Jabra BT500 is compatible with most other Bluetooth devices that have Bluetooth 1.1 capability or higher. You can hook up the headset to other bluetooth enabled devices within a 10 metre radius.