Motorola H350 Bluetooth Headset: Hands free calling for your cell phone

Last week my wife and I made a trip to the Sprint Store looking to replace our old cell phones with more up-to-date phones. She had a Sanyo SCP-4700 and I had a Nokia 3588i which was given to me with the 2 year contract when we first signed up with Sprint PCS. The Nokia was a decent phone but very basic and with very low screen resolution. My wife’s phone was about 7 years old and had a monochrome display with basic features.

I wanted a phone with MP3 capabilities and my wife wanted one with a decent camera, we found that the Sanyo SCP-8400 would cover both of our needs and with many more attractive features which I plan to review as soon as it is available in the Epinions data base. Neither of our previous phones had Bluetooth capability and we both opted to get the Bluetooth headsets for our new phones as well.

NOTE: The Sanyo SCP-8400 was just entered into the data base, hence the new link ;-)

We decided on the Motorola H350 Bluetooth headset. The Sprint Store had two colors in stock and I got the black one while my wife opted for the blue. Other than the color, there is no physical or functional difference between the two.


Motorola H350

The device is small but a little bit larger than I would have thought for an ear piece, but it weighs very little so it is still not very noticeable when wearing it. After a short time I got used to it, but I do not “forget that I am wearing it” as others have claimed. The device has three buttons on it; one large call button and two small volume buttons located at the top and bottom of the device. These three buttons serve all the functions of the headset.

The ear attachment is made of rubber with a wire inside for stiffness and simply loops over your ear. The design is simple but it works rather well. I have not yet had the headset fall off by itself. It does tend to get uncomfortable over long periods of time and especially of you wear glasses because the ear piece of your glasses gets pressed into the back of your ear (or presses the ear piece of the H350 into the back of your ear depending on which one is on the inside) causing discomfort after a while. The weight isn’t bad, but it does tend to pull on your ear after a while.

The ear attachment is reversible so you can wear it on either ear. It comes ready for use on the right ear but it only takes a second to reverse it for the left ear. To turn the headset on you simply hold the call button until the blue light flashes. To turn it off, you hold the call button until it flashes rapidly and then turns off.


Pairing

Pairing the headset to my SCP-8400 was very easy and only took a few seconds. You turn on Bluetooth on your phone (which is off by default) and hold the call button on the headset until the blue light comes on solid; this puts the headset into pairing mode. Then in the tools menu of the phone you select “Bluetooth” then “add new” and it will find the headset in about two seconds. That’s all there is too it, now the headset is paired to the phone.


Supported features

Hands free calling
The headset supports hands free calling by voice commands. You simply tap the call button and speak the name of the person you want to call and the phone dials the number. To end the call you simply tap the call button.

Hold
You can put a call on hold by holding down the call button until you hear a beep. To resume the call do the same.

Reject a call
To do this simply press and hold the call button until it beeps instead of tapping the call button to answer the call.

Answer a second call
Hold the call button until it beeps. This puts the first call on hold and answers the second call. You can switch between the calls by holding the call button until it beeps as well.

Join a 3-way call
To do this you press and hold both volume buttons.

Transfer a call from phone to headset
If you answer a call or make a call on the phone, you can simply tap the call button on the headset to transfer the call to the headset.

Mute
To mute or unmute a call, simply tap both volume buttons at the same time.

Redial
To redial the last number you called, simply press and hold the call button until it beeps.


Call quality

The headset has a decent sound quality and is about as good as having the phone to your ear. Personally I can not tell the difference between the headset and the phone speaker and both are pretty good. I do have a little trouble when there is a lot of background noise (loud music or television, strong wind and traffic) but it isn’t a deal breaker. For the most part, the audio clarity is satisfactory.

People on the other end of the call have never asked if I was on a cell phone but on the occasion that I ask them how the call sounds they tell me they can hear me fine but my voice sounds slightly muffled. I haven’t had to repeat myself very much and even then it was because of the background noise. Overall, I am happy with the audio quality of phone calls with the headset.


Battery life

The headset has an internal rechargeable battery and comes with a charger to use at home that plugs into a standard outlet. We also opted to get the car charger for the headsets since that is where we mostly will use them. We charged the headsets when we brought them home and have yet to recharge them after a week of use (which is a total of about four hours of talk time and maybe 10 hours of stand-by time). I do not know yet how long the battery lasts on a single charge but it isn’t showing any signs of dying yet.

The battery takes about two hours to fully charge from dead. The blue light on the headset indicates when it is charging by turning on after about a minute and when it is fully charged it turns off.


Connection distance

So far I have not used the headset anywhere but my home and my Jeep but in my home I have been able to walk up to 25 feet from the phone without losing the signal. Our house is small and I usually stay in the same room as the phone but 25 feet is reasonably far enough considering I usually have the phone attached to my pocket or relatively close by.

The documentation that comes with the headset claims that it can connect up to 30 feet from the phone but I haven’t been that far away from the phone so I can not confirm or deny that claim.


Conclusion

My wife and I are both pleased with our new phones and our new headsets. The Motorola H350 is a decent headset for the price. We paid about $32 each including tax and do not regret it one bit.



Thanks for reading,
Gr8ful ;-)