Nokia BH-505 Original Bluetooth Headset

Pros: The excellent construction, great aesthetics and good color combination makes it a real treat to use. The apt positioning of the buttons. The provided extra ear buds. No wobbling when using it while jogging. Sufficiently good battery life.

Cons: Found a bit of trouble connecting it to the iPod Touch 4G. But all other devices, namely the HTC Desire, a Nokia 5800, an Acer Tavelmate and a Toshiba Satellite laptop could detect it easily and connect automatically once it had been paired.

Summary: Nokia has created one of their finest Bluetooth Stereo headsets till date. Excellent aesthetics combined with a great color combination gives it a certain elegance. The body feels velvety to touch.
No abrasive or sharp edges are present. Very smooth surface and a real smooth finish add to the already excellent construction.

The button placements is another plus point. Optimally positioned for easy access. Though the volume knobs on the right and the next - previous knob on the left are a tad small and slightly difficult to use at first, one gets used to it in no time. But, it was to be expected from a construction that has kept its form factor so very less. You have the call answer/end key on the right side and the play pause button on the left. Both are easily accessible.

Nokia provides extra in ear 'buds', so one can choose the most apt for them. This is very much appreciated as I found the standard ones not very comfortable and switched to one of the spare ones.

Once worn, the headset stays in place and does not wobble at all. As the entire weight is placed at the rear, there is not much of weight being placed on the ear and no discomfort is felt even after prolonged use. This is very much appreciated as sometimes the commute from home to workplace and back might take a while.

Call quality is good. The other person was able to hear everything perfectly. Although sometimes, you tend to hear an echo of some sort. But it could also be because the in-ear arrangement of the headset tends to block out all other external noises. There exists only a single microphone on the left side. This means no noise cancelling technology is built-in. But during testing the call quality in a crowded street, the conversation was perfectly legible to the person on the other end.

Music playback was found to be very well done. Even at loud volume, the speakers don't give that screeching noise and no distortion of any kind was observed. Though you hardly ever will use it at those volume levels, as in-ear headsets tend to shut out all other ambient noises to a very great extent.

Battery life is very well for a Bluetooth stereo headset. I got about 16 hours out of it playing music at moderate level of volume and no calls in between. This wasn't done so in one complete stretch.

You can connect about 8 devices to the headset at a time, though I never tried more than 2. But it is to be noted that only one music playback device and a communication based device can be connected at a time together.

The usual procedure of pausing the music playback when a call is received and resuming it on dropping the call is also present. Also, voice dial over Bluetooth is also supported.

For its price, it is indeed a real treat. It retails for around Indian Rupees 3500.

All in all, a great little device that can easily cater to all that you require out of a stereo Bluetooth headset and then some more.