Bluetooth Headphones

[Deckard]

Normally as you know I am quite happy to think I am Stephen Fry in that no tech subject no matter how obscure I can expand upon as a tech God, well, meet a hole in my armor - I know nothing about bluetooth headphones (sorry I know one thing about them - up to fairly recently they have always been shit) which is a pity as hubby has decided he wants some for his birthday next week as his iPhone now supports them.
Have Googled and searched all the usual places and not really seen any good reviews or nice ones - Can you lot help ? Only criteria is they need to be handle music at least decently and the very occasional phone call - under a hundred quid would be good too.

Edit Actually these look nice http://www.jaybirdgear.com/bluetooth-st ... atures.php
and 79 pounds http://www.foneshop.com/accessories/des ... 4wod4Ua7oQ
If you lot dont come up with anything by Monday to beat these then these will be the ones he will be getting

[Rhythm]

I recommend the Jabra BT3030. Looks like a chunky dogtag (the chain is removable) but has discrete controls placed on it. The best thing is that although it ships with some basic in-ear 'phones, you can plug any headphones you want into the main unit. Shouldn't cost more than £40. Has excellent battery life and is shower/sweat-proof too (so great for exercising)

[Deckard]

I looked at those but a) hes not gay enough to carry that look and b) he wants it as an all-in-one unit so controls on the phones themselves. I cant believe there is so little choice out there Cant find any by any decent headphone manufacturers - I know audiophiles like me would normally slag them off as sub-standard but surely someone must have a proper stab at them ?

[WiteWulf]

Also worth noting that, although OS3.0 supports Bluetooth headphones now, it still doesn't support Bluetooth remotes, so all those buttons are pretty useless.

[Rhythm]

Also worth noting that, although OS3.0 supports Bluetooth headphones now, it still doesn't support Bluetooth remotes, so all those buttons are pretty useless.

Mine seems to work just fine on my iPod Touch

[WiteWulf]

Ah, fairy nuff, I retract my previous statement, I've obviously been fed duff info!

[juice]

I looked at those but a) hes not gay enough to carry that look and b) he wants it as an all-in-one unit so controls on the phones themselves. I cant believe there is so little choice out there Cant find any by any decent headphone manufacturers - I know audiophiles like me would normally slag them off as sub-standard but surely someone must have a proper stab at them ?

Hmm - I picked up the Jabra BT3030 from the 3 shop, for £30 - a tenner less than the labelled price, but the bloke on the counter just shrugged and carried on regardless

It's a good little unit - the only problem I have is the lack of volume control (at least on my LG Cookie) you've either got Loud or Very Loud.

Past there: I can understand why an all-in-one integrated unit could be preferable, but I like being able to use my own choice of headphones

Oh, and typing "bluetooth headphones" into Ebay throws up a plethora of options - admittedly, a lot are anonymous units from China, but there's a fair number of branded units in the fray as well...

[WiteWulf]

Just had an idea: I've got a car stereo with aux input on it that I currently connect my iPhone to directly with a cable. Would I be able to just connect one of those Jabra 3030s to the aux input instead and keep the phone in my pocket? Does it take batteries or need to be charged? If the latter, how does it charge?

[hype]

I also are looking for some good bluetooth headphones
I am thinking of buying pulsar590a or pulsar590e.

a modell is with the bluetooth dongle for stuff that don't have bluetooth and e is whitout.

[Deckard]

My partner got fed up waiting and got these - http://www.sony.co.uk/product/nws-w-series/nwz-w202
Work very well for gym and jogging and you can drop tracks from iTunes straight in)

3 minute quick charge gives you 90 minutes of playback too

[Portland]

I'll stick to my wires until something with better battery life comes along I think, although the dogtag doobery looks a decent idea.

Odd the tech's been around a while but there are few pukka units it seems.

[WiteWulf]

Grrr..based on Rhythm's reply up there I bought the BT3030 and have been playing about with it this morning. Simple playback works fine (pause/play button) but the track skip (ffw/rew) buttons do nothing. I've done some digging around on the Apple discussion forums and it would appear that Apple only implemented AVRCP 1.0 in iPhone OS3.0, whereas AVRCP 1.4 is required for the track skip buttons. This was an acknowledged issue in the 3.0 beta program and may be fixed at some point in the future. Consequently no bluetooth headsets will support this properly with the iPhone 3G and it's worth noting that, on a colleague's 3GS, the pause/play button doesn't work either (and this has been noted by many other users on the Apple forums).

I'm reasonably happy with what I've got at the moment but look forward to this being improved in the future with Apple OS updates. However, I'd advise anyone looking for full functionality from one of these devices to wait a while until Apple sorts it out.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 3&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jsp ... 42&start=0

[teamonkey]

I've lost my Apple headphones so last night I finally dug out my Sony DR-BT30Qs, gave them a good charge and paired them up to the iphone. No problems in use, apart from the aforementioned lack of skip. The sound quality is a bit better than it used to be when paired with my old Orange M3100, which I guess is purely down to CPU horsepower.

The only problem I'm having is that they look stupid. Imagine having a shiny grey golf ball with flashing LEDs stuck to each ear and you get the idea. Also, if you run they practically tear your ears off. I think I paid £15 for them at the time though.

[WiteWulf]

You may find that the M3100 didn't support EDR in it's A2DP implementation. The earlier versions of Bluetooth would transcode the audio before transmitting it to the receiving device but EDR allows 'native' transfer of MP3 and AAC audio to be decoded by the receiver. This usually gives much better audio quality.

[MegaZoid.]

I got a set of these on ebay http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029 ... 035,00.htm
Think i picked them up for far less than the £100 asking price, very nice they are too.