Motorola’s Bone Conduction Bluetooth Headset is the Best Headset You’ve Never Tried
July 14, 2012 in Commentary, Review
Since bluetooth headsets hit the market, I have considered them to almost be a cell phone necessity. 聽The convenience of bluetooth headsets has spoiled me to the point I refuse to hold my phone just to talk on it. 聽When I’m out and about, my phone stays on my hip when I’m talking. 聽When I’m at home, my phone stays on the charger, while talk using the bluetooth headset. 聽Unfortunately, using a bluetooth headset doesn’t necessarily mean everything will be perfect. 聽The one issue that has been a constant battle with bluetooth headsets, is the handling of background noise. 聽Some handle background noise relatively well, while others are extremely poor.
One thing I have found is the cheap bluetooth headsets cannot be used in any area with background noise, as they will pick up every noise around you. 聽When I purchased my first noise cancelling bluetooth headset, it was a godsend. 聽I could ride in the car without having to speak so loudly, it sounded like I was yelling at the person on the phone. 聽Alas, the noise cancelling bluetooth headsets worked well, but still had their shortcomings, primarily wind. 聽I’ve found that no matter how nice of a noise cancelling bluetooth headset I bought, if I was in the wind, the person on the other end was going to hear it quite loudly. 聽I eventually formed a habit of covering the headset with my hand while outside and the wind was blowing.
As with all headsets, eventually something happens that causes you to need a new one. 聽Once my headset broke, I began to search for an even better noise cancelling bluetooth headset than what I had been using. 聽My search would lead me to the Motorola Finiti noise cancelling, bone conducting headset. 聽This particular headset immediately caught my attention as it has a very unique feature, bone conduction. 聽For those that don’t know, bone conduction technology allows for sound to be transmitted via vibrations of your bones, instead of via a microphone. 聽In theory, this would mean I would experience an unprecedented level of noise cancellation. 聽Eager to give the Motorola Finiti a shot, I ordered one.
My experience with the Motorola Finiti has been phenomenal. 聽The noise cancellation part of the headset works fairly well, as it cancels out a decent amount of background noise. 聽Though it did fairly well with noise cancellation, it pretty much was on par with what I have come to expect out of a noise cancelling headset. 聽What sets this headset apart from the rest is the bone conduction technology, and how well it works. 聽Motorola included a “stealth mode” button on the headset that activates the bone conduction sensor and cuts out the microphone. 聽Using this mode virtually eliminates background noise all together.
I decided to do a test to see how well stealth mode eliminates background noise. 聽I turned on a sink and placed my head right next to the loudly running water. 聽Without stealth mode, not even the noise cancellation was a match for the sound of running water. 聽The caller on the other end stated the sound of the water was quite loud, despite the headset having noise cancellation. 聽Keeping my head in the same place, I turned on stealth mode. 聽Immediately, the caller said “hello”, thinking the phone had hung up because it instantly became silent. 聽She could no longer hear the sound of running water despite the fact my head was still in the same place, right next to the water. 聽When I began to talk, she could hear me clearly. 聽Now to be fair, she did say the voice quality wasn’t 100% as clear as without stealth mode, but the quality was decent. 聽Most importantly, she could hear no background noise at all.
I then did what I consider to be the ultimate test of a bluetooth headset’s noise cancelling capability. 聽I took it with me on a bicycle ride, and rode downhill at 30 mph. 聽At that speed, the amount of wind noise is unreal, and no matter how good your noise cancellation is, you cannot be heard over the wind. 聽I went down the hill and turned on stealth mode. 聽The person on the other end stated she could hear absolutely no wind noise anymore, despite the fact I was traveling 30 mph downhill on a bicycle. 聽She could hear me quite well. 聽I have never experienced this prior to using the Motorola Finiti. 聽Prior to using the Motorola Finiti, there was no such thing as being heard in the wind, let alone 30 mph winds. 聽Now, I can simply activate stealth mode and make background noise disappear as if it weren’t there at all.
In addition to the Motorola Finiti’s insanely effective bone conduction technology, it comes with a slew of additional features. 聽When receiving a call, the Motorola Finiti will announce the caller’s name. 聽After it announces who’s calling, you can then say “answer” or “ignore”, to answer or ignore the call. 聽It’s a truly hands-free process. 聽The Motorola Finiti is also A2DP compatible, so you can stream music from your smartphone to the headset. 聽At this point, I’m sure it’s obvious, but I highly recommend the Motorola Finiti headset. 聽No it’s not a headset that’s new to the market, but it has been flying under the radar, and hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves. 聽If you’re tired of people on the phone saying your background is too loud, or they can’t hear you, give the Motorola Finiti a shot. 聽You’ll love it.
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