Motorola HS820 Bluetooth Headset

	Motorola HS820	Motorola HS810
Weight	15.9g	19.9g
Body Size	63mm x 28mm(1)	89mm x 30mm(1)
Talk Time(2)	7:05	5:15
Ear Loop	Non-adjustable	Non-adjustable
Left/Right Ear?	Both	Both
LEDs	1 blue	1 blue
Pairings	Multiple	Multiple
Features	Call reject, redial, hold	Call reject, redial, hold
Headset Sound	Clear, but a bit thin	Clear, but a bit thin
Mic Sound	Clear, but a bit thin	Clear, but a bit thin
Link	BUY HERE	BUY HERE
Talk Test	MP3	MP3
Noise Test	MP3	MP3
Wind Test	MP3	MP3
Included Accessories	Charger	Charger
Pros	Very compact/light, comfortable, good audio, good range, great battery	Compact design, comfortable, good battery, resists wind noise
Cons	No beep on power on/off, affected by wind noise	Minor problem with Z600
1) Size measurements are approximate 2) hh:mm. Music was piped continually through the headset in both directions, for a worse-case scenario

Motorola's HS820, the latest in their 800 series of headsets, is the first Bluetooth headset from a major manufacturer to support the new Bluetooth v1.2 specification. What does this mean to you? At this point, probably not a whole lot. But Motorola claims that it will equate to better audio quality and an improved resistance to interference - when used with a Bluetooth v1.2 spec phone. Of some interest, it appears that Motorola is adopting the v1.2 spec for all upcoming headsets, including the forthcoming HS805. It also appears that they plan on releasing v1.2 versions of the existing HS810, too.

For those of you wondering, so far it appears that the Siemens S65 is the only handset on the market that supports the v1.2 spec, though there are a decent number of PDAs and USB dongles that support the new version of the spec.

But all of this talk about the various Bluetooth versions is not all that important to the typical user. Most people are concerned with how the headset performs, how comfortable it is, its looks.... With that in mind, I think that most people will find the HS820 of interest.

In terms of raw performance, the HS820 has much to be proud of. The battery, which Motorola claims is good for 6 hours of talk time, actually managed a tad over 7 full hours in our own tests. I must point out that there were a few quirks experienced in the testing, though. A couple of times the audio dropped even though the connection between the HS820 and my laptop was maintained. This caused me to restart the test a few times, since it could have an impact on battery life. During the final talk-time test, I had to reconnect once in the 7 hours to restore the dropped audio. In all cases, this only seemed to happen after a couple of hours of continuous audio, so I don't expect it to be a problem in the real world.

So 7 hours of talk time is great, in theory, but is not of much real world worth if the quality of the sound is poor. Luckily the HS820 has no such issues. The audio sounds almost exactly like that of the Motorola HS810, my current favorite headset. Both inbound and outbound sound could use a bit more bass, but the audio in both directions is very clear, which means you and the person you are speaking with won't have to strain to understand each other. Volume levels are also very good. You can actually make the headset "too" loud in most circumstances, which is the way it should be, since it allows you to deal with noisy background environments.

One of the things that the HS810 was great at was dealing with the wind. Strong wind caused little or no noise with that headset. Unfortunately that is not the case with the HS820. The new body design does not seem to shield the microphone from the wind very well. This is not to say that it performs worse than the other headsets on the market, which all seem to have the same problem, I just mean that it no longer can deal with noise the way the HS810 (or the similar GN Netcom 6110) can. That's a shame.

 

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