Sony Ericsson Akono HBH-600

	Sony Ericsson HBH-600	Sony Ericsson HBH-60
Weight	22.6g	22.7g
Body Size	79 x 65mm(1)	79 x 65mm(1)
Talk Time(2)	2:09	1:30
Talk Time w/silence(3)	4:02	not tested
Ear Loop	Adjustable position	Adjustable position
Left/Right Ear?	Both	Both
LEDs	1 multicolor	1 multicolor
Pairings	Single	Single
Features	Mute, battery status, call reject	Mute, battery status
Headset Sound	Very clear, full sound, good volume range	Very clear, full sound
Mic Sound	Fairly clear, a bit digital sounding	Clear, a bit too much bass
Link	BUY HERE
Talk Test	MP3	MP3
Noise Test	MP3	MP3
Wind Test	MP3	MP3
Included Accessories	Charger, lanyard, extra faceplate	Charger, case
Pros	Great design, very comfortable, changeable faceplates	Great design, very comfortable
Cons	"Beep" problem on some handsets, no multiple pairings	No Hands Free support (fixed with some firmware and on HBH-65)
1) Size measurements are approximate 2) hh:mm. Music was piped continually through the headset in both directions, for a worse-case scenario 3) Best-case time, sound being transmitted

When the Sony Ericsson HBH-60 first came out, it was a bit of a revolution in terms of headset design. Up until then, most all headsets had a shape not unlike the HBH-30's, that is to say they had a long microphone boom that extended towards the wearer's mouth, much like what you would expect a jet fighter pilot to be wearing. The HBH-60 was also more comfortable than the other headsets available, at least to my ears. It was lacking in battery life, however. It actually had significantly less battery power than the HBH-30 (and subsequent HBH-35).

Sony Ericsson addressed the battery issue to some extent with the HBH-65, an update to the HBH-60 that consisted of a new color scheme and a new battery. And that is where the state of the art sat as far as Sony Ericsson headsets were concerned.

Now we have the new Akono HBH-600, a device that makes use of the familiar and time tested design of the earlier models, but offers it in a slightly updated fashion. In fact, the major change to the design involves fashion: the HBH-600 has user changeable color faceplates.

The surprise is that there is no major change to the battery. In fact, when the HBH-600 is run through our normal torture test, it achieves a time nearly the same as the HBH-65: a bit over two hours. In the torture test, music is played through the microphone to be sent to a PC, and the PC sends back music to the headset. This means that there is no silence at all, as much data is transmitted as possible. A worst-case scenario. The thing that differentiates the HBH-600 from the HBH-65 is how it conserves power. Unlike the HBH-65 (and most every other headset I have tested, as far as I can tell), the HBH-600 attempts to detect when the wearer is not really saying anything, and all that is present is background noise. When this is the case, the headset transmits nothing, dead air, thereby saving power. In fact, when I reran the test on my PC without the music playing into the microphone, the talk time of the HBH-600 nearly doubled, coming in at 4 hours and 2 minutes. Quite a change. This kind of technology is going to force me to rethink the way I test headsets in the future. In a real world scenario, you are likely to get an amount of talk time much closer to the 4 hours than the torture test's 2 hours, as a very large part of human conversation consists of silence. But as always, your milage may vary.

One other minor change was made. No longer can you put the headset into pairing mode by holding down the power button for an extra long time as you turn the headset on. Now you need to perform a reset by holding in both volume buttons for a few seconds. There is nothing wrong with this method, it is just different than every other Sony Ericsson headset I have used. While talking about the volume buttons, pressing them both briefly at the same time will toggle the headset's mute mode. That's always handy.

 

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