As you can see, the Sony Ericsson headset sports a small rectangular base unit controller with all of the user controls (power, volume up/down, charging connector) and it holds the battery, as well as a clip for attaching it to your clothing. Connected to the base unit controller is a wired ear-piece with a traditional earbud on the end. On the back side of the ear bud is a call control button used to take or make calls.
As you can see, it’s not 100% wireless since the ear bud + cable runs to the battery casing/Bluetooth transmitter. Thus, you have to clip the unit to your shirt and have an ear bud + wire running up to your ear. On the plus side, some people don’t like the comfort of Bluetooth headsets that sit in your ear due to weight, size of ear piece, etc. Many are used to ear buds from Sony, Apple, etc., which are lighter than wireless Bluetooth headsets. Another benefit of this is that you don’t have to leave it in your ear all day which can cause a bit of ear achiness. You can leave it clipped, but remove the ear bud. I'm told by a Sony Ericsson representative "I think quite a few women don’t like the big piece in the ear." But don't tell 4G expert Carl Ford it's only for women. I saw him wearing a wired headset with earbud to his mobile phone and he too said he doesn't like the weight of Bluetooth headsets.
Before using the headset for the first time, you need to charge it with the supplied charger for 8 hours, after which, the normal charging time is 2.5 hours. After it was charged I simply had to press and hold down the On/off key on the headset until the indicator light showed a steady green or red light. After 3 seconds, the light turns off and the headset is on or off. I was sent a white model to review, though the only model I see available for purchase is black. Guess I got a special edition!
Here's a snapshot of the white model:
The headset sports a built-in noise shield designed to improve quality in noisy surroundings. It also has dual microphones and wind noise cancellation to eliminate background noise. The headset also supports intelligent volume adaptation, which automatically adjusts the caller's voice to your surroundings.
One nice feature is that you can use your headset with two phones since it supports multipoint. With multipoint, you can use the headset with two different phones at the same time, for example, your private phone and your business phone. You can answer and put the call on hold to answer the second call from your other paired phone.
Features:
- One-year limited warranty
- Bluetooth™ wireless technology
- eSCO (extended SCO)
- Full duplex echo cancellation
- Intelligent noise reduction
- Initial Pairing mode
- Mute
- Multi phone support
- Real time noise reduction
- Remote voice volume control
- Redial
- Second call handling
- Secure Simple Pairing (SSP)
- Talk time: up to 300 min (5 hours)
- Standby: up to 250 hrs
This headset certainly has a niche market for picky headset users out there like Carl Ford that will enjoy the Sony Ericsson VH700 for its comfort level. Though perhaps the "niche" is much bigger than I realize. The sound quality of the headset was pretty good and I had no complaints over the features, although I would have liked AD2P streaming audio support. All-in-all an excellent clip-on Bluetooth headset. It retails for $59.99 but I see it listed on Amazon for around $46.
