Plantronics Discovery 925 review: Plantronics Discovery 925

Save for a few exceptions, Bluetooth headset designs haven't changed much over the past few years. Most of them just look progressively smaller and blockier. There are some standouts though, like the Aliph Jawbone with its perforated shell, and the Callpod Dragon with its circular disc shape. This year, Plantronics is entering the fashionable headset market with one of the most different-looking headsets we've seen to date, the Plantronics Discovery 925. It comes with its own leather charging case, and Plantronics even showed it around during New York Fashion Week 2008, fully stamping it with luxury fashionista status. Looks aside, the Discovery 925 has quite a comfortable fit plus great audio performance. It'll cost you, though, as it is currently retailing at $149.95 per unit.

To put it bluntly, the Discovery 925 looks like a giant paper clip or hair pin. Measuring 2.7 inch long by 0.9 inch wide by 0.5 inch deep, the Discovery 925 is topped with a square diamond, and the boom mic tapers down to a point, forming a hollow trianglelike shape in the middle. The boom mic also houses the headset's antenna. It is very lightweight, only weighing about 0.28 ounce, and certainly won't weigh the ear down. The overall look is stylish and one-of-a-kind, but as we said, we can't help but think of it as more hair accessory than Bluetooth headset. The Discovery 925 comes in black, gold, and cerise (a purplelike hue) at the outset, but will have more colors later on.

The aforementioned square diamond houses the multifunction button directly on top of it, as well as a LED indicator light. It's nice and big, and is very easy to press, even when worn on the ear. On the top left is a singular volume control button. Instead of a rocker that can increase and decrease the volume, you have to use the volume control button to toggle through three volume levels. We weren't too pleased about this, but we understand it is probably because of size constraints. On the top right is the charger jack.

On the back you get a very simple and small in-ear style earpiece along with a gel eartip cover. The eartip has a square loop that lets the earpiece fit in the ear without the help of an ear hook. The Discovery 925 comes with small, medium, and large eartips for different size ears. We found the fit to be snug and secure, though it does take a bit of maneuvering to have it fit properly--it's suggested that the boom mic should point toward the corner of the mouth for optimal voice clarity.

Features of the Discovery 925 aren't too different from other Plantronics headsets. There's the typical answering, ending, and rejecting calls, as well as voice-dial support, last-number redial, and the capability to transfer calls from the headset to the phone and vice versa. A nice bonus feature is the 925 supports Multipoint technology, which lets you pair up to two different Bluetooth devices at once. This way you can use one headset with two different phones.

The Discovery 925 comes with a leather charging case that looks a lot like a lipstick case. You can charge up the case along with the headset for extra battery life.

We tested the Plantronics Discovery 925 Bluetooth headset with the RIM BlackBerry Pearl, and the pairing process went very smoothly thanks to the Discovery 925's QuickPair system that automatically places the headset in pairing mode when it's turned on for the first time. Call quality was excellent, with audio performance comparable with landline quality. This is probably because of Plantronics' AudioIQ digital signal processing technology that reduces background noise considerably. Callers reported that our voice sounded very natural, and we thought the same of them. That said, it didn't perform so well in windy environments.

The Plantronics Discovery 925 has a rated talk time of 5 hours. It had a rated standby time of 7.29 days with the Multipoint technology turned off, and a rated standby time of 4.16 days when it's turned on.