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— | the_hunt_for_a_good_headset [12.04.2021 01:30] (current) – created Pascal Suter | ||
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+ | ====== The hunt for a good headset ====== | ||
+ | one thing that covid taught us is to use audio / video conferences for quick meetings. We use MS teams in our office and i am using it now just as much to hold one-on-one calls as i use it for conferences with more than two participants. Right when switching to home-office mode I initially got a Logitech Zoom Wireless headset which has served me well so far, however, I wanted more and started looking around for the perfect headset **for me** .. mind you, choosing a headset is probably a very personal thing, as we all have different requirements and proportions. | ||
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+ | ===== Important features ===== | ||
+ | **Wireless: | ||
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+ | **Sidetone: | ||
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+ | **Comfort: | ||
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+ | **Sound Quality:** sometimes i'm alone in my (home) office, but when for example my wife is around and she is in a call herself or the kids are home too and scream in the background, i would like to listen some music to stay focused. So a good sound quality is a big plus. | ||
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+ | **Microphone Quality:** my current headset has a pretty good microphone for conf-calls, so the standard is set pretty high for my new headset. I can't afford to sound worse with my new headset if I want to avoid to be " | ||
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+ | ===== Previous Headsets ===== | ||
+ | my first one was a sub 30$ USB headset from a brand called ISY. It was a wired USB headset with no sidetone.. you can imagine how happy i was with it afer treading the above.. Basically it showed me what I did NOT want :) | ||
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+ | My current headset is a **Logitech Zone Wireless** and it is a phantastic headset for the occational conf call. It has a great microphone, is wireless, can be charged wirelessly as well and can even be used as a bluetooth headset. Further more it comes with some rather limited ANR and it is very comfortable to wear for about an hour or so. And that sadly brings me to the reason, why I want something elese now: if you wear it for more than one hour, it starts to feel very heavy and your ears start to hurt. The zone wireless is an on-ear headset, so it rests ON your ears and not on your head AROUND your ears. Compared to traditional telephone on-ear headsets it is quite heavy and bulky, and hence pushes more onto your ears than you might want. The plastic ear muffs also get very hot after a while and the sound quality for listening to music is acceptable but nowhere near my Bose Quiet Comfort 35's. So I ended up wearing my Bose's to listen to music but then missed incoming calls and chats because they rang on the other headset. | ||
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+ | ===== New Headset ===== | ||
+ | ==== BOSE Quiet Comfort 35 II ==== | ||
+ | Obvioiusly the first Headset I tried was the one I already owned privately. Since my PC (a Intel NUC) has Bluetooth, i just paired my BOSE headset and used it this way. While it was great for listening to music, it was a nightmare for conf calls. As soon as the microphone was activated by a conf call application, | ||
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+ | I soon figured out, that these problems are comon to all Bluetooth connected headsets, so bluetooth for video /voice calls using teams, zoom and other such software, forget it! It does " | ||
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+ | ==== Sennheiser EPOS Adapt 660 ==== | ||
+ | probably the biggest disappointment so far was the first one I have tried. Reviews on Youtube prased it as a great headset for audio conferences and comfortable to wear for a long time. The hard, plastic covered ear muffs which barely fit over my hears however, and the strong clamping force which may make it a great headset for sports but not for office use really made me return it instantly. I gave it a short try as a headset and it was okay sound quality wise, but the ANR was far from my Bose QC 35's, the sound was terribly laking base and it just looks ugly as hell. So that went back quickly :) | ||
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+ | ==== Jabra Evolve 2 85 MS ==== | ||
+ | MS stands for Microsoft Teams certified. Sicne this is our primary application at the office, I thaught i'd purchase the MS certified headset to take advantage of the useless teams button feature.. however, that does not work on linux, so no benefit at all from being MS teams certified if you use linux :) at least there is no disadvantage, | ||
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+ | This headset was way better than the EPOS, sound quality was almost up to par with my Bose, ANR was about as good as my previous Bose QC 25's which i considered sufficient when travelling in airplanes and the microphone quality was on par with my Logitech Zone Wireless headset when the Boom mic was extended. So all in all a good start. It was also quite comfortable to wear for a longer period of time. BUT, and this is a big one, sadly: Sidetone is missing! Jabra provides a sidetone setting in their Jabra + app, but this does not really enable a real sidetone, instead it switches the headset into what they call "Hear through Mode", so you hear everything around you almost as if you had no headset on. This can be irritating if you have noise around you which you don't want to hear in a conf call but more importantly it just feels like you are wearing a very light stereo headset with no sidetone as you still can't hear yourself as good as if you where talking without a headset on. even on the most extreme setting the " | ||
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+ | ==== Audio-Technica ATH-G1WL ==== | ||
+ | that's the next one i'm going to try.. advertised as an " | ||
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+ | ==== Bose 700 UC ==== | ||
+ | I just recently found out that there is a " | ||
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