[General Accessories] Antboy:
After a long search for the perfect BT stereo headset for my 8125, I've found it.

The Plantronics Voyager 855.

Over the past couple of years, I've had the opportunity to try a number of BT stereo options, from Motorola, Sony Ericsson and some lesser known companies like Sonorix and i-Clip, amongst others.

I was never quite happy with any of them though.

I take the subway to work, and every set of Motorola headset I tried would lose it's pairing to the phone whenever I either lost the cell signal, or regained it (which meant re-pairing 4 times a day). This also happend with non-stereo Motorola when working in conjunction with BTToggle.

The i-Clips actually functioned alright although the stereo quality was only so-so. For answering the phone, the sound quality was really poor unless I held that big clip close to my mouth, and cupped it if I was outside (even if it wasn't really windy).

The Sonorix, though cool because it allowed me to use my own headphones with it's jack, would need to be re-paired every 3 days or so. I don't know why. I was wondering if it was my phone, even though I had flashed to a ROM that everyone else enjoys.

The Sony earbuds sounded good, and functioned great (the only set who's audio controls functioned flawlessly to this point). Having the dangly stick and extra wires made me wonder why I'm bothering with bluetooth at all, though. Wearing a pendant with to earbud extensions running out of it wasn't as practical or cool as the promo material made it out to be. :D

In short, no bluetooth stereo headset quite met my criteria... either functionality wise, or form factor.

Until I tried the Plantronics Voyager last month.

It's design is perfect for my needs. It's a typical in ear BT headset, with a clip on ear hook. What makes it cool is the clip on ear hook is the connection to the second earbud (and the cord is braided to be more durable).

The sound quality is right up there with the best of the bunch.

I've not run into any re-pairing issues.

The slide out boom works flawlessly for answering/hanging up calls and all the controls work as they should (only the Sony matched that previously).

6hrs of stereo seemed a fair assessment for battery life from my tests.

The Plantronics comes with a good selection of ear buds (small, medium and large as well as the foam type that mold to your ear canal shape), as well as a couple of optional ear clips if you don't want the stereo dangler.

To conserve battery, I often just use BTToggle to get mono audio (out of both sides) when I'm listening to podcasts. It's definitely a hit on audio quality, but that's okay when it's just talking heads.

The only place where Plantronics loses marks is it's charging situation. Though they can be charged from a USB cable from a computer, Plantronics opted for a slightly different connector than a typical mini-USB one, even though there's plenty of space for one.

Of course the old Wizard barely manages to keep up if I'm running Core Player to watch a DivX vid and streaming BT stereo. If a call comes in, it's slowdown time. Then again, I'm usually watching the vids on the subway, so that rarely comes into play. :D

In short, I finally found the perfect BT stereo headset for me, and just wanted to share. They're discreet, multifunctional and just reek of quality (the braided cord made the difference in keeping them).

PS: I wanted to try out the Jabra 8010 but couldn't find them locally. The Jabra headset has call-display, and apparently a vibrate feature, so if anyone's tried them, I'd be curious to hear about their performance.

Cheers.