Plantronics M100/R Bluetooth Headset

I thought for a while how best to describe the quality and functionality of the Plantronics M100. In the end, I decided to compare and contrast my last ear piece with the M100. Better yet, what I hated about my old ear piece and love about the M100.

Comfort

-Old Ear Piece: Uncomfortable, no matter how I adjusted it or how many ear tips I tried it just hurt to wear. Hard plastic ear loop and not well designed silicone ear piece cover.

-M100: absolutely the most comfortable ear piece I have ever had. I can't begin to describe how comfortable is sits in your ear and stays in place. Very comfortable flexible ear loop what is easy on and easy off. The internal ear piece cover has is comfortable and has a unique extruding piece that hold the unit in place that does not hurt your ear.

On/Off

-Old ear piece: Has a small hard to reach push button that provides no real way of showing that the unit is turned on.

-M100: It has an honest to goodness slide button. If you see red it's off, if you don't see red it's on. But wait there more, when you turn it on the unit will tell you that it's on and how much talk time you have. When you turn it off the unit will tell you it's turning off!

Connectivity

-Old ear piece: You could not tell if the device was connected to the phone, the blue tooth light would flash but you might have to power it on and off to make sure the unit is connected. As you can imagine that it was very frustrating when a call would come in and the unit would not pick up the phone transmission.

-M100: The unit will tell you it's connected and no matter how long you have not used the unit it will preserve the connection with reduced power usage. I've had zero issues.

Range

-Old ear piece: Roughly about 33 feet. The only issue is that when you exceeded the range you just loose the call with little notice.

-M100: The range is 33 feet however, if you exceed the ranged the unit will tell you that you are "loosing connectivity" and when you walk back it will tell you that you are "regaining connectivity."

Setup

-Old ear piece: some issues setting the unit up the first time with one reset required.

-M100: Very simple to setup. The instruction guide was helpful however; I really don't think you needed it to setup the unit.

Sound/Noise Cancelling

-Old ear piece: The sound reception is always spotty. Most calls the person on the other end would complain about not being able to hear me and for static. Outdoors you might as well not have a call. Any wind what so ever and you could not hear and the person on the other end would not be able to hear.

-M100: Nothing but complements with the sound quality from the various people I have talked with including being able to hear me typing. Outdoors no issues in moderate to heavy winds.

Features Unique to Plantronics M100

-Dual microphone in the unit helps with sound quality and clarity.

-Headset battery meter for iPhone.

-Multiple device connectivity this might not be important to some purchases however, if you are in the same boat as my wife she needs two phones because her company does not allow personal calls on a company cell phone. This makes that situation much nicer. I have not tried connecting the headset with an iPad or other type device yet but it's coming.

-Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR and eSCO

Right to it...

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The Pros

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+[Feather Light]:

I have actually had to touch the headset to make sure I still had it on. Very light indeed

+[Comfortable]:

With the feather light weight and fit, this headset can be worn throughout a whole day without issue.

+[Spoken Alerts]:

"Connected", "Lost Connection", "Talk Time, 5hrs", etc... A welcome option for knowing what's going on with your headset, instead of having to decipher what different blinking LEDs mean

+[Easy Pairing]:

Pairing with my Nexus One phone was fast, easy and rock stable. As soon as I go out of range, the headset says so. When I get back in range, it automatically re-pairs and also says so.

+[Excellent Range]: While at home, I like to keep my phone plugged in to charge and just walk around the house with these headsets on, while the phone stays in one location. As long as I'm within the rated range, there's no problem with maintaining the connection. No need to keep the headset and phone within super close range.

+[Wear on Left or Right Ear]:

With the dual-mounting way these headsets are worn on the ear, it makes wearing them on your left or right ear a non-issue.

+[Good Inbound/Outbound Voice]:

With good signal on the phone, the incoming voice quality is on par with using the phone's earpiece directly. Similarly, the outgoing voice when I've called others has been reported to being the same as using the phone's mic.

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The Cons

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-[Needs More Isolation]: The feather light weight and non-invasive earpiece make for excellent comfort, but at the expense of letting in more ambient noise (even with the built-in DSP noise filter). I find myself having to use a finger to press the earpiece closer to my ear to hear better.

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Conclusion

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Easy to use, solid performer. Well recommended.

Buy Plantronics M100/R Bluetooth Headset Now

I have to say that I almost took a star off my review for the terrible packaging this headset came in. Not only was it ridiculously difficult to remove, I was worried I might break the unit getting it out of the packaging. Egads! Also, what ships in this large package is just the headset unit, the power cable and a pamphlet of docs. All of this would have fit in a box / package 5 times smaller than what it shipped in. Clearly the packaging was meant to stand up vertically and be displayed at ATT or some other retail cell location. All this being said I am not rating this headset based on the docs. (But I wanted to!).

First let me say I am not a bluetooth headset expert, I briefly owned the apple bluetooth headset for the iphone but returned it. I also tried the altec lansing stereo bluetooth headphone / headset to less than stellar results. Since those experiments, I just used the very nice apple headphone with the built in mic and volume controls (the ones you buy separate for the iphone for about $40). I just found those to be very easy and I can listen to music while I work or drive and then also make or take calls easily. Also you don't need to charge them up.

Pros of the M1000R BT Headset:

Small, lightweight design, you barely feel it in your ear.

It uses both a wrap around ear holder or also a new soft rubber "plug". I don't know how to describe it but it works very well. You choose which works better. I liked the plug a lot.

Comes with 3 sizes of the rubber "plug" (ok i need to find out the right word) and it's very comfortable and stays in place. This was well researched and designed.

Call quality is strong, loud, i tested it 10-20 feet away with no problems. I could get used to this.

There is a built in voice that tells you the status, volume level, battery life.... snazzy.

It seems to work flawlessly with the iphone 4 (paired perfectly), all functions worked. You hold the headset button down to activate the iphone's voice dial feature.

Battery life seems strong, says 6 hours, haven't talked enough to know for sure. Charges very fast.

You power it off with a slider rocker, I like that, sometimes you never know if it's on or off with the soft click buttons.

Cons: (not many)

Packaging sucked, yeah I know, move on.

Only comes with a home charger, its nice and small, but would some sort of combo auto charger be a lot to ask?

Pressing the call button sort of squishes your ear, it's a hard press. Maybe it will soften up over time.

There are are 3 buttons on the unit power, call functions, and volume. This is fine but the docs come with a big list of functions that you either single tap or double tap to enable. Many of these are based on the status of your call. If its an active call the taps do different things, it's the call was lost they try to redial or reconnect. It just seems a little complicated considering you are likely to be driving in the car, etc. I dunno, maybe this is the best way to go. The basic functions work fine using the tap to take a call and the volume to adjust.

The voice dial function takes a little getting used to, You hold down the call button for 2 secs, then it bongs at you, but that signal is just telling the iphone to start its voice dial function. So then you wait to hear the iphone's sort of double bong that means you can now give your voice command. It takes some getting used to, I wasn't sure how long to hold the button down for and when to speak. it seems I was always talking too soon or too late.

All in all, a great headset for the $$.

Read Best Reviews of Plantronics M100/R Bluetooth Headset Here

This is my first Plantronics bluetooth headset & I must say that I'm very pleasantly surprised. I was going to buy one of the other bluetooth headsets (also from Plantronics) but went for M100 as soon as I saw it. I've been using the Motorola H-721 and compared to that its a big leap for me:

Pros:

The speed at which it connects to both my iPhone 3GS & BlackBerry 9700 is awesome. Its instant. I love it for that. Previously, I would have to wait for the 721 to connect to one and then take a while to connect to the other one. But for the M100 its instant and almost simultaneous to both.

It gives a battery meter on my iPhone 3GS (as advertised) which is a great feature, haven't seen or heard anything like it for any other headset.

The voice prompts are great they are generally for power on & off, connected to phone 1 & 2, battery low etc. May not seem much but is a great feature. When you turn it on, there is a voice prompt announcing the battery life in terms of 'remaining talk time' yes! not a percentage but the numbers of hours of talk time remaining....on a full charge it says something over 6 hours of talk time.

The fit with the ear gel is excellent. I was a little suspicious at first, but, within a few minutes (watched the video), I got the hang of it. I don't like using the ear hook at all. Besides, not using the ear hook gives me the freedom to 'change ears' without having to fiddle with the hook. Love this feature a lot. Don't even realize I'm wearing it.

The person on the other end can hear me well. Was able to test it with loud background machinery noise, and it seemed to be doing its job perfectly well as the person on the other side could hear me clearly without any noise in the background. However, I had to strain to hear that person, then pushed the volume up but the voice wasn't as clear as I would like.

Another great feature is when I'm talking on my iPhone, it does not disconnect from the BlackBerry. So when I get a call on my BlackBerry while I'm talking on the iPhone and want to switch from the iPhone to BlackBerry, its instant. Just a click on the call button and the line transfers no more waiting for one call to end and then for the headset to reconnect to the other phone and then take the call. Believe me! this happens a lot to me and on my H-721, I had to wait for the phone to reconnect or I would take the phone call directly and then wait for the caller to transfer to the headset while I spoke directly through the phone.

The form factor is great. Its very thin...the thinest one I've ever used but its not paper. So don't get too excited there :-)

The sliding on-off switch is great. No need to check for the led light. If it shows red on the slider its off simple!!

There is no led blinking light on the front of the headset which I personally prefer. I hate it when people I talk to look at the headset from time to time as the blinking light distracts them. Also there's no blinking from my shirt pocket when its there. Don't know how others feel about it but its a plus for me.

It automatically reconnects to one or both phones if I accidently walk out of my office room wearing the headset. There's a voice announcement in both cases lost connection and reconnecting.

Cons:

To be honest, it doesn't have a lot of down sides. One thing I did note is that the listening voice clarity varies from person to person and therefore (obviously) with the caller's cell phone to cell phone. I did notice that some callers were very clear and for others I had to push up the volume. I've been using the headset at medium volume. So not sure if this is because of my headsets or others' phones/headsets etc. However, I would think that Plantronics can do better in this area so that we can hear the caller's voice more clearly and distinctly.

There's only one volume button which cycles through the different volume levels. Maybe the Company should think about having dedicated up & down volume buttons. But this is really not a big deal. Just a suggestion for future improvement.

All in all, this is an amazing bluetooth and so far I'm very happy with my purchase.

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I have been using this Plantronics m100 for a week now and it is the best bluetooth for the iPhone 4. This headset even generates an icon on the iPhone that shows the remaining charge on the headset as well as giving a voice prompt announcing remaining talk time when turning on the headset. I had tried a Jawbone Icon previous to this, but had to return it as some people could not hear me due to Jawbone not picking up my voice. The jawbone seemed to have trouble with the sensor detecting that I was speaking, unless I held the bottom of the Jawbone against my face.

Previously, I had another Plantronics (925) headset that worked fine with my iPhone 3G and 3GS, but horribly with my iPhone4. Very short range when it worked at all with iPhone 4 and terrible voice quality. At times I could hear the callers but they could not hear me. At other times it would even disconnect when iPnone 4 was in my pocket and earpiece was on the opposite ear! Finally, after I had it a few years (paired with the iPhone 3G and 3GS), it died and would not recharge anymore (ThankYou!). It seems that some bluetooth headsets work better with certain cellular phones than others. The m100 seems made specifically for iPhone 4 and is giving me fantastic range, exceptionally long range if in my line of sight, and excellent sound quality. Pairing is the easiest yet and it seems to stay connected unless I get out of range, when it will warn me that it is disconnecting. It easily and automatically reconnects when back in range with a voice announcement. And....it is even comfortable and exttemely light, and can be worn with an ear hook (included) or just fitted in the ear canal with one of the three included ear gels. I even ordered a second unit for backup!

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