Sony Stereo Bluetooth Headset SBH2. Review & Rating. The Sony SBH2. 0 stereo Bluetooth headset does more things than probably any other Bluetooth headset we've ever tested. You can use it to make calls or listen to music. Or you can connect it to a pair of exercise- friendly headphones and go for a run. Or you can use it for wireless audio on your home stereo system.
It even has NFC to pair with compatible devices with a single tap. And it does all this for just $4. It could almost be our favorite new stereo Bluetooth headset, except noise cancellation isn't great and it doesn't do voice dialing. But for a jack- of- all- trades stereo headset, this one's tough to beat. Design, Fit, and Pairing. It isn't hard to figure out Sony's design inspiration here. · The Sony SBH20 is a surprisingly flexible stereo Bluetooth headset that is good for listening to music, taking calls, or even going wireless with your home. The SBH2. 0 looks exactly like an i. Pod Shuffle. From the tiny, clip- on design, to the multitude of colors (black, white, pink, orange, and turquoise), it's easy to confuse the headset with Apple's portable music player. That's fine by me, since it's sleek and discrete. It's also reminiscent of the Jabra Clipper Bluetooth headset, which itself is a clip that attaches to your clothing. But Sony has bested both Jabra and Apple with its design here, as the clip on the back of the SBH2. The device itself is a 1. I tested the white model, which is made of sturdy plastic with a matte finish, and a silver clip on the back with Sony's logo. Depending on how you fasten it, there's a volume rocker on top, a power port on the right, and a Power button, status light, 3. The face has a Play/Pause/Call button in the center, flanked by Previous and Next track buttons. Although these buttons are highlighted with a clear, shiny overlay, they're the same exact color as the rest of the device, which makes them difficult to see. And they're completely flat, with barely any clicky feeling, so I never really knew whether I pressed the right button until I heard it through my earbuds. The SBH2. 0 comes with a set of in- ear headphones, with three different rubber tips so you can get a good fit. I found both the medium and large- size tips to be quite comfortable, and the in- ear design really helped block out surrounding noise. The earphones are designed to be worn around your neck, so one earbud wire is longer than the other. But in general, the primary wire that leads up from the SBH2. You basically need to wear the SBH2. That's fine for making a call, but if you just want to listen to music, it would've been nice to have a longer wire so you can put the SBH2. Thankfully, you can still connect any pair of headphones you want. As long as they have a 3. Here's how it works: The SBH2. I found the clipping mechanism easy to use, and wide enough to accommodate most types of fabric. The SBH2. 0 is automatically set to Bluetooth pairing mode the first time you use it, but you can always reenter pairing mode in the future by turning it on and holding the Play button down for a few seconds. Once in pairing mode, just pair it the same way you would with any Bluetooth device. An added bonus is NFC support. If you have a device with NFC, simply tap the SBH2. For this review, I tested the SBH2. Apple i. Phone 5, a Sony Xperia ZL, and a laptop PC running Windows 8. I didn't experience any pairing issues or audio dropouts. Sound Quality, Additional Uses, and Conclusions. For calls, the microphone is built into the corner of the SBH2. I always find it a bit awkward to make calls using an in- ear headset, since the sound of your own voice is so prominent in your head, but that's inescapable here. For calls made indoors, voices sound somewhat digitized, but overall clear and easy to understand. Outdoors, however, is a different story. Noise cancellation is terrible. Voices became virtually inaudible over wind and background noise, even in areas that weren't terribly noisy. But this isn't the type of headset you should use in a car, since the in- ear headphone design would make for unsafe driving conditions. So as long as you don't plan to make any calls mid- jog you should be alright. For receiving calls over the included headphones, the SBH2. Voices are a little thin and robotic but otherwise clear. At top volume, the headset lasted for exactly five hours. At mid- volume, it should be able to reach Sony's quoted six hours of battery life, and Sony claims up to 2. For music, sound quality is surprisingly good. All of the songs I listened to, across a number of genres, sounded rich, powerful, and clear, and the bass didn't distort, even at top volume. Don't get me wrong; these aren't headphones for bass fiends, but there's enough bass response to please casual listeners. And the best part is that you can always swap out the bundled earbuds for another pair you prefer more. For a brief comparison, Sony's bundled buds sound better than Apple's new Ear. Pods, but can't hold a candle to a pair of Bowers & Wilkins C5 In- Ear Headphones. All of the controls on the face of the device work as you'd expect. The only bummers are the aforementioned sticky keys, as well as the fact that there's no way to trigger voice dialing from the SBH2. You can still use it to complete voice controlled tasks, but you need to initiate them on your phone first. Range is average; I was able to walk about 1. Within another 1. And here's a cool feature Sony doesn't highlight: You can connect the SBH2. Bluetooth- compatible. That means your computer speakers, for instance, can be plugged into the SBH2. You can even use the speakers to receive calls, although you still need to be clipped onto the SBH2. Still, when you consider that devices created expressly for this purpose, like the Logitech Wireless Speaker Adapter, cost virtually the same amount, you realize that this is a pretty good value. The SBH2. 0 does a lot more than most other stereo Bluetooth headsets, and in most instances Sony hasn't piled on features at the expense of quality. With better noise cancellation and less finicky controls, the SBH2. Bluetooth headset of choice. As it stands, it is still a very good choice for many buyers. The Jabra Clipper is a similarly solid option, with near- identical capabilities but a slightly different look and design. The Plantronics Back. Beat Go remains our Editors' Choice for its superior voice performance, excellent noise suppression in both directions, and clear sound quality. Wireless fidelity: making sense of Bluetooth headphone technology. Bluetooth is a short- range, low- power wireless standard for transmission of digital data that has been around since 1. It has many uses, but of course the one we are most interested in here at The Headphone List is audio streaming. Bluetooth has evolved a number of specifications and profiles over the years, which can be somewhat confusing and are rarely explained all in one place. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief introduction to Bluetooth technology pertinent to audio streaming. Article overview (click to jump to a particular section)Bluetooth basics. Bluetooth versions (v. Bluetooth profiles (HSP, HFP, A2. DP, AVRCP)Bluetooth audio codecs (SBC, apt. X, AAC)Additional features (NFC, Multipoint)Bluetooth compatibility and limitations. Selecting the right Bluetooth headphone. Bluetooth basics. Bluetooth Logo. Bluetooth devices come in all manners of shape, size, and function, but as far as audio is concerned there are two basic types – transmitters and receivers. A Bluetooth audio transmitter is any audio source with Bluetooth functionality, for example an i. Phone, computer, or dongle that receives audio input from another device. A Bluetooth audio receiver can be a wireless headphone or speaker, or a dedicated audio receiver. The transmitter sends out a digital signal encoded in a way the receiver can recognize. The receiver then decodes this signal and converts it to analog for audio playback. To establish a link between transmitter and receiver and determine which Bluetooth profiles can be used (see Bluetooth profiles section below), an initial setup step called “pairing” is necessary. Bluetooth versions. Bluetooth is commonly listed with a specification version, usually ranging from v. Newer Bluetooth versions are backwards- compatible and any optional components that may follow the Bluetooth version number, such as +EDR (enhanced data rate) and +HS (high speed), do not affect Bluetooth audio streaming. Bluetooth v. 2. 1 simplified and streamlined the pairing procedure back in 2. Later Bluetooth versions improved power handling and power saving functionality, which may affect attributes such as range and connectivity, but anything specified v. With Apple products such as i. Phones and i. Pads, compatible headsets with Bluetooth v. Bluetooth profiles. Bluetooth profiles are sets of specifications for how certain functionality must be implemented by Bluetooth devices. There are dozens of profiles for everything from file transfer to wireless printing, but the ones we are interested in are those applicable to headphones and headsets. HSP (Headset Profile) – allows basic headset functionality with microphone input, 6. HFP (Handsfree Profile) – a more advanced version of HSP also designed for mono headsets; among other things adds support for additional remote functions such as redialing and voice dialing. The latest version (1. SBC codec used by A2. DPA2. DP (Advanced Audio Distribution Profile) – designed for multimedia and used for stereo audio transmission over Bluetooth. This is the profile we are interested in as headphone users. AVRCP (Audio/Video Remote Control Profile) – provides remote control of media playback (e. A2. DP. The latest AVRCP versions (1. With previous versions, volume controls affected headset volume independently of the connected device. All stereo headphones support A2. DP and AVRCP, and – if a microphone is present – at least HSP for headset functionality. Most stereo Bluetooth headsets implement all four of the above profiles. Bluetooth audio codecs. So far so good, but what determines how audio is sent to a wireless headphone? That would be the codec. After the transmitter selects the appropriate profile, it chooses a codec to digitally compress the audio for sending to the headphone. The headphone then decodes the file for playback. Although it is theoretically possible to send mp. Bluetooth, this is not what happens. Instead, the A2. DP profile specifies its own set of audio codecs. SBC (Subband Coding) – this is the mandatory default codec for A2. DP and is supported by all Bluetooth stereo audio devices. It was designed to provide reasonably good audio quality over the limited bandwidth of Bluetooth without heavy processing power requirements for encoding/decoding. SBC is capable of bitrates up to about 3. Hz sampling rate (source). This is not far off from the maximum for mp. SBC in terms of audio quality given similar bitrates (source). The biggest problem from an audio quality standpoint is that SBC is also capable of mid- and low- quality streams, which sound quite compressed and to my ears are unacceptable for music streaming. Sound quality varies widely between different SBC implementations. A generic USB Bluetooth transmitter I picked up for $3 from e. Bay sounded absolutely atrocious because it defaulted to the lowest SBC quality, but installing a brand- name one with a CSR chipset in its place had excellent results. With some versions of Apple OS X, SBC quality is set to low or medium by default but can be changed manually to increase audio quality and fix other issues (source). X Logoapt. X – apt. X is a proprietary audio codec developed for demanding audio applications. Its use in Bluetooth devices is entirely optional. In fact, apt. X is currently supported by only one manufacturer of Bluetooth chipsets – CSR – who acquired parent company APT back in 2. X is designed to encode a CD- quality (1. Hz) audio stream without loss of sound quality through a combination of slightly higher data transfer rate compared to SBC as well as more efficient audio encoding. The caveat is that both the headphone and the source must support apt. X – if either one lacks apt. X support, the default SBC codec will be used instead. Currently, apt. X support is limited to mostly high- end Android smartphones and Hi- Fi wireless devices. My Nexus 5, for example, does not support apt- X (source). It is also not implemented in Apple devices such as i. Phones and i. Pods. For more information on apt. X, visit the CSR website. For a list of apt. X- compatible devices, see here. AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) – unlike SBC and apt. X, AAC is a codec popular outside of wireless applications, including Apple’s i. Tunes platform and You. Tube. It was designed to achieve better sound quality than mp. Unlike apt. X, it is supported by i. OS devices. Apple implements AAC over Bluetooth at about 2. However, at this time AAC support in wireless headphones is not very common. At least in theory, Bluetooth transmitters automatically default to the “best” quality codec available. The default Bluetooth stereo audio codec, SBC, can sound quite good with the right implementation, especially for on- the- go use. However, it can also produce some horribly compressed- sounding audio at its worst. X takes out the guesswork, maintaining consistently high bitrates, but both the transmitter and receiver have to support it and it is not implemented in Apple devices. AAC is supported by Apple devices, but not many other transmitters, and has been picked up by few headphones. For those concerned with audio quality, at least for the time being, apt. X seems to be the solution to beat. Additional features. There are a few more Bluetooth functions that are supported by some current headphones. These are independent of the profiles and protocols listed above and don’t affect audio quality, but are worth mentioning for the sake of completeness. NFC (Near field communication) – NFC is a wireless standard for close- proximity data exchange. While it can technically be considered a Bluetooth competitor, NFC has a very different set of strengths and weaknesses. It has slower transfer speeds than Bluetooth and a much shorter range (a few inches at most), but also uses far less power and does not require “pairing”. There are many different uses for NFC ranging from mobile payments to data transfer. When it comes to headphones, however, NFC is used as a “handshaking” shortcut to establish connection. Bluetooth devices that support NFC can be paired and connected by simply bringing their NFC chips together. In the case of my Nexus 5, this has allowed me to pair, connect, and disconnect NFC- enabled headsets without ever opening the phone’s Bluetooth menu. Doesn’t seem like a big deal at first, but it is surprisingly convenient in everyday use. The caveat, of course, is that that both devices have to support NFC. For a list of devices with NFC support, see here.
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