I picked up the Motorola H700 Bluetooth Handset to pair with my Motorola A1200 Ming. The nice thing about this is that it’s the smallest one they had at the store (which shall remain nameless). It’s incredibly light, but unfortunately it doesn’t feel substantial (like much of it is hollow or something). It uses an internal rechargeable battery that uses the same 4pin usb cable (included) that the Ming requires to charge. This headset has a boom that swings out. When open, the headset is on, and when closed it’s off.

..:: Pairing

The H700 pairs effortlessly with the A1200.

1. Turn bluetooth on the phone to On by clicking on the system bar (has your signal strength, battery remaining, and the current time). Then go down to Bluetooth and set it to On.
2. Prep the H700: close the boom, hold the call button until it lights up purple, then open the boom. The purple light should stay on.
3. Then go to Menu->Bluetooth->Search. The H700 came up instantly for me. Click Bond.
4. The default pin number to bond with the H700 is 0000, so enter that and hit OK.

That’s it. You’re now good to go.

..:: Usage

This is where my gripes come in. First, I have big Italian ears. I also wear wire framed glasses nearly 24-7 (I usually fall asleep in them, and it drives my girlfriend nuts). The headset feels like it dangles from my ear, and makes me wonder: is this what clip-on earrings feel like? Moving my head even the slightest bit or walking make it bounce around. My huge ear should fill up the mounting arm, but the headset still dangles. If my ear doesn’t fill it out, I can’t see how most people could use this. The entire mounting arm is some sort of rubber or plastic material - there is no internal wire to shape it to your ear. The arm does come off and flip-flop so you can use the headset on your left or right ear.

Making calls is alright. I use the bluetooth handset to dial out and everything works perfectly fine. Using the call button for voice recognition is worthless. With some 300 contacts in my list, it never works, ever. It thinks everything sounds like Elliot, or Adrienne. To test, I asked it to call Adrienne, and it couldn’t recognize her name properly. I would think that the system is better suited for Chinese, but the voice director speaks clear English. Receiving calls is another issue. I was driving around with the headset on and received a call, so I just tapped the call button and it picked up. However, when I was back at my apartment, I grabbed the headset (which was closed), and then apparently the Bluetooth had turned itself off (I’m guessing it idled too long or something). That’s just annoying.

I put the bluetooth headset in the little pocket on my right pocket of my jeans. When I took it out, I found out that there is a small metal plate on the boom that is secured solely by a little sticky tape. Well, that tape isn’t very strong, and the plate came off (and it’s a very thin metal, so it now has creases). I thought only Sony was capable of such brain-dead design flaws (which is the reason for my Sony boycott, but that’s another story). Here it is, not even four hours into owning the headset, and the casing is already falling apart. I wasn’t even handling it abusively.

..:: Overall

It’s mediocre. It’s the first Bluetooth headset that I’ve tried. Unfortunately, it will not be my last as I’m returning it tomorrow. I can understand the horrible voice recognition, but that’s not the headset’s fault. However, with the loose fitting mount arm and the shoddy casing, I would never pay for this.