[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Reviews:

There’s a comparatively common complaint in the user comment section of the CNET review: "It doesn't stay in my ear well even with dif size earpieces, it goes into ear canal at an off angle so it cant get a good seal and the ear piece material doesn't stick to your ear good enough either. I constantly have to push it into my canal even when I have the ear loop on. It has the small less than 1cm round earbud style that you can push deep into your ear." They also have a very short video "review", which is more of an advertisement not lacking superlatives - "fantastic audio quality" and the like. While I do consider the 855’s audio quality good, it still can’t beat decent supra-aural headphones like the Pulsar 590 or the (of course, pretty uncomfortable) Moto HT820. That is, the video should have stated "decent audio quality for a canalphones model and/or much better quality than any earbuds" instead.

Laptop Mag’s battery life / recharge benchmarks are a bit different from those of mine; they state "we got seven hours of music playback while taking intermittent calls. But we were peeved that we had to wait two hours to fully charge the headset before using it". The truth, as far as continuous music playback is concerned, battery life is considerably worse (around 5:30...6 hours) and the recharge time a bit longer (around 2:20).

PCMag’s review is plain bad as the reviewer doesn’t really seem to know the limitations (and qualities) of A2DP. She states "Stereo music played through the Voyager 855 sounded middling to poor. I heard some bass, though it distorted easily and was more boom than actual punch. The midrange and high end exhibited hazy stereo panning, tinny treble, and not enough "air" around the instruments. Oddly, lead vocals were hard to hear as well. Sometimes electric guitars on tracks by the band Muse would get louder and then recede a few moments later, presumably due to quirks in the Bluetooth connection. This is certainly no headset for audiophiles." and "Audio enthusiasts will probably prefer wired buds, due to the sonic limitations of the current A2DP Bluetooth protocol." Actually, it’s the mechanical parts that are the bottleneck, not A2DP. A2DP is capable of delivering much better audio quality than a small-sized, non-isolated earbud will ever deliver. Second, she complains about the lack of basses. I’m not at all sure she has pushed the phones into her ear sufficiently strongly enough. Without making them fit, you’ll indeed encounter poor basses. Again, these are in-ear monitors, NOT earbuds. The latter only need to be placed directly outside of the ear canal, while in-ear monitors need to be firmly push into the canal itself. On the other hand, if you do push them into your ear canal (which can clearly be noticed immediately because the isolation starts working and the external sounds will sound much quieter), the basses appear – at a much higher level than most? all? true (external) earbuds like the (factory) iPod, Zune, Nokia N95 or most HTC stereo headsets.

Indeed, speaking of external earbuds, the reviewer doesn’t seem to know the vast audio quality difference between canalphones (in-ear monitors) and traditional earbuds - assuming you’re used to the awkwardness of the former. Incidentally, the same review has been published at Smart Device Central, where, in the first comment, the Plantronics acoustic designer responsible for the 855 explains (some of) the inherent flaws of the article. Let me cite it in its entirety (it’s really worth reading):

"I am the Plantronics acoustic designer responsible for this product and have a few comments on how to get good audio quality from this and similar headsets.

With this fit style (frequently called a canal-phone); if the user thinks that the headset sounds "tinny" it is 95% certain that the seal between the eartip and the ear-canal has been compromised. If the bass appears to be present but not "vibrant" it is possible that one ear has good fit and the other does not.

In order to provide both background-noise isolation and good audio performance from a very small loudspeaker (required in such a small product) it is necessary to seal the output of the speaker to the ear-canal. I won't go into details as to why, but the requirement is actually pretty rigorous, a gap the diameter of a human hair will degrade the bass response at very low frequencies and it doesn't take too much larger a leak to produce the impression stated by the reviewer.

If a slight tug on the headset or earbud does not produce a slight feeling of "suction", there is too much leakage to get optimum performance. When perfectly coupled to the ear this product has an acoustic response that is flat to below 10 Hz. (two octaves below the lowest note on the bass guitar) but a significant leak can make it hard to hear the bass at all.

I do not consider the requirement for seal to be a virtue, but if adequate attention is paid to fit, the results are superior to other approaches. The alternative is a much larger headset to achieve similar performance (although not bass down to 10 Hz.) so it worth it to try different (supplied) eartips and manipulate the headset to get the right fit. The size and shape of individual ears varies greatly and it is difficult to engineer a single eartip that fits everyone. Normally a bit of care will produce a good fit and once you have heard the improvement it will be easier to achieve and maintain."

PC World: an average review with an average score. It seems to, to some degree, trash A2DP and recommend wired headsets over any A2DP phones. Again, I disagree: with quality A2DP implementations (again, all current smartphone stacks except for the Microsoft one in WM5), A2DP does deliver excellent quality.

ZDNet’s review doesn’t really elaborate on the A2DP mode; most of its remarks concern the standard (mono) headset mode.

MobileBurn’s recently-published review seems to be much fairer; its pros/cons lists are pretty much the same as mine.

Treonauts’ review is pretty short and certainly lacks sound quality evaluation. It, however, has some pics.

The Amazon user reviews (there are 25 of them) are also worth checking out.

WMExperts have also published a mini-review and video without much elaboration on the sound quality. They state it’s average; I am not sure whether they have indeed pushed the phones in the ear canal sufficiently well (as is, again, also emphasized by Plantronics’ acoustic designer).

PhoneArea’s article is more of an ad. Good Gear Guide’s article isn’t much better either.

symbian-guru’s short and mostly Symbian-related (reports on tests with the N95-3) article is HERE.

There’s some decent posts at pinstack.com.

Plantronics Pulsar 590

Not taking into the Voyager 855 into account (again, if and only if you can live with in-ear monitors and/or definitely need a set of A2DP headphones that look professionally without making few people aware of you’re listening to music, unlike with supra-aural headphones), this is probably the most recommended model.