As our desires to make listening to our podcasts a simple process as possible, having the opportunity to physically separate ourselves from the player whilst still managing to listen to our favourite shows is an attractive one indeed.

One way of achieving this is to use a bluetooth headset with an appropriately bluetoothed enabled device that is capable of playing mp3’s, these include PC’s, PDA’s, Mobiles and MP3 Players. Until recently you could only listen in mono using the headset profile, but now two new profiles have surfaced, the A2DP for High Quality Stereo Sound and the AVRCP for High Quality Stereo Sound with remote control and will soon be available on many mobile phones and Windows Mobile 5 devices as well.

To take advantage of this new technology, a glut of stereo bluetooth headsets are about to flood the market in 2006 and we got the opportunity to look at one of these, the Globalsat Stereo Headset BTH-820. You have two options here, buy the entertainment pack which contains the headset and a gateway device enabling you to listen to any non Bluetooth device, like your stereo at home with the headset or just go for the headset on its own. You can pair the headset with your mp3 player and phone at the same time, meaning if you’re listening to your favourite podcast and the phone rings, the music will stop allowing you to use the headset to take the call and when you’re finished the podcast will start playing again, a very handy feature.

The headset and gateway come in two flavours, orange or blue and the main unit feels solid enough, with a reassuringly tactile feel to the buttons and doesn’t seem like its going to fall apart with regular use. Included are a set of in-ear headphones which are of reasonable quality and give a solid enough sound, but to make the most of this unit I would recommend replacing these with your favourite headphones, which is easily done with the standard 3.5mm (1/8inch) socket. The microphone for speaking when taking calls is built in to the main unit and whilst some people may prefer it to be integrated into the headphones I find this a better solution as good headphones with a microphone are not readily available and I found the microphone to be sensitive enough for the other person to hear what I was saying even when hanging round my neck and under a jumper.

Pairing the BTH-820 with a device was a simple enough process, simply hold the on/off button down until both the blue and orange lights flash and follow the directions for pairing on your player and it will pair within a few seconds, no dramas here. Speaking of the lights, they are quite bright and the blue light flashes constantly whilst paired and some people may not like the idea of their chest flashing when sitting on the train. Once paired, I fired up some tunes on the IPAQ RX3715 PDA to see how it sounds. I was pleasantly surprised by the clarity and range of the sound and bass was evident, not quite with the depth you get with a direct connection but more that acceptable. With every device I tried from the PC to a variety of mobile phones, the quality remained constant and suffered from very little drop-out due to interference from other devices. It had a range of about 3 metres before the music started to drop and it tolerated a sustained period of silence without losing its connection, simply come back within range and the music starts again, which is ideal. I was able to adjust the volume up and down as I desired and the levels were more than adequate, even loud when paired with some devices which is rare with most bluetooth headsets. If your device supports the AVRVP profile then happily you will be able use the BTH-820 to control the music by pausing, playing and skipping backwards and forward to the next track, very nice and works flawlessly. Battery life was the claimed 5 hrs of listen time, this is just long enough to get through the day with out running out of juice, unfortunately the battery is not changeable.

Turning my attention to the second part of the entertainment package, I decide to see if the BTA-830 could offer a similar level of service, pairing it was simple again, just holding the on button again on both devices until its flashes is all that was required to get them connected. Once plugged into my home stereo and after pressing play, the sound started streaming almost instantly and had a similar range of 3 metres. Unfortunately the sound quality was not as good as it had been when using the headset, infact it was poor, if your planning to use this combination exclusively for listening to your non bluetooth devices then your best looking elsewhere.

If all this functionality is not enough, you can even use it to control skype on your pc and its remote control functions work with Windows Media Player, there’s quite a lot packed into one of these devices and the benefits are clear, watch a video late at night but don’t want to disturb your neighbours, no problems with the BTH-820. Phone rings whilst you soaking up latest episode of the Lost, no problems here either, the music or video will stop playing leaving you to take the call - all hands free.

Overall I found this little unit very useful and the listening quality will be more than acceptable for most other than the most hardened audiophile, the ability to listen and control the tracks as my PDA sat safely in my bag away from prying eyes was a revelation and its seems this may be the way we will be all listening to our favourite podcasts in the not too distant future.

The Globalsat Bluetooth Entertainment Pack:
• Globalsat BTH-820 Bluetooth Headset
• Globalsat BTA-830 Bluetooth Audio Gateway
• White “bud” style headphone
• Multi standard power adapter (Euro/UK)
• Dual USB charging cable
• Spare headset ear buds.

The Globalsat BTH-820 Bluetooth headset supports the Bluetooth 1.2 specification with the following Bluetooth Profiles:
• HS - Headset
• HFR - Handsfree
• A2DP - Advanced Audio Distribution Profile
• AVRCP - Audio Video Remote Control Profile

The Globalsat BTA-830 Bluetooth Audio Gateway also supports the Bluetooth 1.2 specification:
• A2DP - Advanced Audio Distribution Profile

This entry was posted on Monday, February 6th, 2006 at 6:49 pm by Daniel Sussex and is filed under Pro Podding. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.