Bluetake i-PHONO Plus BT420Rx-C Bluetooth Headset - Testing it with music and phone
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The first thing I noticed when I unfolded the headphones, is that the frame that runs behind your head seems to be a little flimsy. This might seem this way only because it’s a hollow channel so the wire/antenna could run between the two speakers. Take a look at what I mean by this:
When I put the headphones on my head, they feel a little heavier than the wired headphones I have of the behind-the-neck variety. The ear-pieces are a bit on the large side, too. This is to be expected, since they contain a decent amount of electronics in them. Seeing them lie on my desk, the girls here in the office made a comment how they might look funny on someone’s head. I put them on and they said that since I have dark hair, it's not that noticeable. A couple of months ago, we reviewed another pair of Bluetake headphones that were white in color, and did not have the rigid behind-the-neck frame which are a bit more awkward because you have each ear supporting an independent piece. Anyways, for illustrative purposes, I’ve taken a picture of these headphones on two of my daughters, to show the contrast.
As you can see, these headphones are large, and with a lighter colored hair they stand out more. For those of you who are fashion-conscious when you are shopping for headphones, this may want to be something to consider.
As I said above, these headphones were a bit heavy. While they were perfectly comfortable sitting at my desk working or walking around the house, if you were to try and wear them for jogging, you would feel them bouncing up and down on your head.
Now, with that all said and done, when I first started listening to music with these, I was really surprised at how clear they were. As I said before, I’m a bit of an audiophile, and I love my music. If there is any distortion or hiss, I’m going to pick up on it. But there was none of that. I listened to a couple of CDs (including one by the Boston Pops), as well as some streaming audio.
One of the things that I noticed was that the volume controls on the headset were a little odd to use. There is a plus button and a minus one, which are obviously for volume. In order to properly use them, you push the button you want to use, wait a few seconds, and then push it again. There needs to be about a 1 second pause between each press, or the subsequent presses don’t register. I tried holding it down, pressing it quickly, and the volume did not continue changing unless I pressed it repeatedly with a second-long pause in between each press. This is not too inconvenient to do, but it was not listed anywhere in the instructions.
Now, in order to test the telephone functionality, I wore my telephone on my hip and had a friend of mine give me a call. When the phone call came in, I pressed the multifunction button on the headset and the music stopped. “Hello?” I asked, as I lowered the microphone. My friend said, “Hey, use the headset!” He thought I had answered it using the phone, and I certainly hadn’t. We talked about junk for the next 10-15 minutes, and the sound quality was very good. I didn’t notice any dropouts or missed words for the whole conversation. When I figured we had talked long enough, I made my goodbyes and pressed the multifunction button again. The music came right back. It was not on the same song anymore, since the i-PHONO Plus has no mp3 player controller features. 15 minutes of my playlist had continued to play as I was talking on the phone.
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