I recently had the misfortune to drop my HBH-65 Bluetooth headset and damage it - it wouldn’t turn on and wouldn’t charge.  Being a sealed unit and (of course) a couple of months out of warranty I soon discovered it would be cheaper to replace than to repair - so I went looking for a new headset.  Naturally, my first port of call was Mr. Gadget’s web site to take a look at what he had available.  Having furnished myself with a suitable list of models I liked the look of, I then trekked off round the local shops to get a hands-on, or ear-on, experience. 

My headset requirements are fairly simple.  I’m not interested in caller-id, with the number of contacts and potential callers I have, it would be pointless displaying just the number to me;  only a small percentage of numbers would mean anything to me and I’d want to answer all those, it would be the ones I don’t recognise I might want to filter but I just can’t remember that many numbers.  I did want a decent battery this time (the HBH-65 was very poor) but I didn’t want the clip-on type of unit, I’m also not a particular fan of the Jabra styling so I ended up with just a short list of three. In the end I came back to Sony Ericsson in the shape of the HBH-300, Mr. Gadget’s pricing was as good as ever and it arrived by AaE a couple of days later. 

In the box can be found the headset itself, a mains charger, a desk/car stand, some double sided adhesive tape, a small clip and the usual huge multilingual manual.

The overall styling of the 300 is not that far removed from the 65 though it is longer, having a boom style microphone.  Unlike the 65, the 300 has its battery mounted in the ear loop rather than inside the main body, this permits a larger battery for greater talk and standby time and hopefully permits the battery to be replaced if necessary for repair.  The volume control is a simple +/- rocker switch found on one side of the body, about half way along the unit.  Next to the volume control but on the front (outer) face can be found the call handling button which is also the power button.  Further along towards the mic. is the LED used to indicate the various function states of the device;  the charger socket is on the inner face opposite the power button.  The ear loop may be rotated for left or right use and the end of the boom has a slight flexible section in it just before the microphone, presumably to provide some bending and/or shock protection.

The car/desk stand is a two piece construction - a thin centre rest which has a charge plug in the centre (onto which the headset plugs) and a cord with a socket at the end, into which the charger is plugged, plus a desk mount in the form of a ring onto which the centre rest can clip.  On its own, the rest may be stuck to the dash in the car with adhesive tape (supplied) and the car charger (not supplied) plugged in to the cable socket. Mounted on the desk stand, the rest provides a fairly elegant but rather large charging stand.  The bare charger can also plug directly into the headset and, surprisingly, is the same charger as my previous headset used so I have a spare charger for work.  When the unit is charging it cannot be used for calls, the LED is red and goes green when charged.  While I can see the benefit of the car mount, it is a shame no car charger is supplied, to make it more worthwhile.  Without the charger, the mount seems pointless since the headset is better on the user’s head! 

Rather than the useful belt case supplied with my previous unit, a rather pathetic little clear plastic clip is provided which clips to the front of the unit to permit it to be hung from the edge of a shirt pocket or similar thin material.  While this is fine in theory it is actually totally impractical in reality, unless you really starch your clothes.  The weight of the device at the heavier end where the clip is means it twists on the pocket or hem and becomes bulky and uncomfortable, it can also only clip to thin material, denim has no chance.  I actually made a hole in the bottom of my HBH-65 belt case to allow the boom through or simply drop the unit in my shirt pocket.

Once initially charged, the unit immediately goes into bonding mode at power on;  this may also be achieved by turning the unit on and continuing to hold the power button for about five seconds until the LED blinks red and green.  Bonding takes place on the phone and the PIN is the usual 0000;  the headset supports voice dialling and both the hands- free and headset BT profiles, but of course the XdaII doesn’t support hands-free so it bonds in headset mode.  The LED blinks green once bonding is complete and during normal operation, it blinks red when the battery is getting low.  The battery status can be displayed by pressing the volume up and down buttons together and counting the blinks.  However, since it can only display 3, 2 or 1 blinks this is pretty worthless, the 3 blinks disappears fairly soon after charging and the 1 blink appears at a similar time to the blinking red low battery LED - pretty useless, much like the HBH-65.

Finally, then, to actually using the HBH-300.  The balance of this device is not bad at all and the weight is quite good too, it settles comfortably over the ear and does not interfere with my sun glasses.  When a call comes in, both the headset and phone ring - pressing the call handling button answers the call;  if a call is taken or made on the phone, pressing the call handling button transfers it to the headset;  pressing the button during a call on the headset terminates the call.

The ring volume in the headset and the volume of the call are both adjusted at the same time by the volume control, either during or out of a call.  I did find that the clarity of the caller was excellent although at times a little quiet - I would have liked to be able to turn the volume up a little higher myself.  According to reports from friends and colleagues, plus what I’ve heard on my own answer-phone, the sound from the microphone is very good - nice and clear but without too much background noise.  Battery life with the new design is, of course, vastly superior to its predecessor, though the quoted talk and standby times are their usual optimistic (i.e. unrealistic) values. 

In conclusion, I think this headset is a great improvement on my HBH-65.  The battery life is much improved but the battery level reporting is still pathetic.  The maximum speaker volume is a little low for my taste but the microphone sound quality is very good, the weight and balance are good too.  The manual is no better than the previous one, but then again it is also no worse;  the failure to supply a car charger but to supply a car cradle is a little poor.

One footnote to all this: Shortly after taking delivery of the new headset I tried to open the old one using various inappropriate tools (I’ve liked taking things apart since I was a kid).  While I did fail to open it, I did... err... manage to make it work again!  Ah, good old brute force and ignorance wins out again.  To rub salt into the already open wound, Mr. Gadget then managed to arrange for me to get a SuperTooth II to play with as well, so I probably could have got away without buying the new headset after all, oh well.

I give the HBH-300 an improved 9/10