Motorola MOTOROKR S9 HD Bluetooth Stereo Headset (Black)

Rating

Brand Motorola

Type Wireless Phone Accessory

List Price $79.99

Price Item currently not available

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Description

New, bulk products together with b/w photocopy manuals.

Customer Reviews

I use them everywhere 2010-04-10

By BMCDECARFN (JP)

I use them at the gym, PS3 gaming, and the transmitter on my IPOD I use with my bluetooth helmet riding my Street bike around. The first sync with the system will skip and chatter but it only did it for a minute 9 months ago once. I turn on my IPOD with transmitter hit play and right then I turn on the headphones and it works immediatly everytime. Anyone that says it doesnt work probably doesnt know how to turn on a light switch.

Not suitable for any particular purpose 2009-09-13

By Andrew Lopucki (Gainesville, FL USA)

The main flaw is skipping audio caused by poor bluetooth reception. Style designers ruined the engineering of this product. The instructions actually tell you that you can't put your phone in your pocket because of the reception problem. However, there is a workaround. The reception is great If you look straight down at the ground (towards your pocket; NO I'M NOT JOKING!) It seems that the antennae is configured so that it receives signal best on a tight band aimed directly out from the antennae in back of your head. Unfortunately the headset rests naturally in such a position that this means you can only get reliable signal from straight in front of you. I even tried rolling my phone in my short sleeve like a 1950's greaser would a pack of cigarettes and (no kidding) it still skipped! (The two devices were practically touching!!!) So I can't even use these at the Gym or on runs or walks.

Other problems were that (even when looking directly at the music player) the sound quality of music was mediocre at best (despite the HD designation by marketing.) Others here have said the sound was great and maybe it's the renderer. I tried these with two different devices and the sound was muddy on both. In both cases I could attach a $5 pair of headphones from WalMart and the sound was 10 times more distinct with better dynamic range. I tried the 'WOW technology' and all I can say is WOW, there seems to be no difference at all!

Worse than the music sound quality however, the quality of out-going voice audio on phone calls was extremely muddled. I left a message for myself on my answering machine, enunciating as clearly as possible, and I could barely understand my own message. When I called other people they constantly had me repeat myself - which drives me nuts!!!

So to review: It doesn't work for music (skipping, bad sound quality, only works if music player is placed straight ahead of me), and it doesn't work for phone calls (bad sound quality for both incoming and outgoing audio.)

So this headset is entirely worthless and I returned mine for a refund.

Great Sound Quality 2009-09-10

By M. Oh (L.A., CA USA)

I am not an audiophile but these headphones are great! And if you ARE an audiophile, what are you looking at bluetooth for? Get something with a wire made by AKG Acoustics or Sennheiser. Sound range and response is very good for small headphones. Tried a wide variety of music from Bach Cello Suite, country, NIN, and others and had no problems with the headphone side of the sound quality. Some songs sounded tinny but with some adjustments to the equalizer that got taken care of (a good reminder to all to adjust your equalizer settings and normalize your music). I did some testing in regards to the sound clipping & stuttering, and found that most of the problems are due to the transmission side of the bluetooth connection. Most cellphones and dongles are class 2 bluetooth which has a range of UP to 10m (30ft) unobstructed line-of-sight. In reality a real range is about 3-5m (10-15 ft.), like with my Sony HWSBTA2W class 2 transmitter. A real reality check is that if you take apart most CL2's, they are barely CL2, you will find that the antenna is a little chip 5mm x 2mm don't expect a lot of power out of that. My transmitter brings up another point, poor sound quality may come from the bluetooth transmitter. A generic transmitter on a computer (dongle or embedded) has to process in order to send, so what you may be hearing is the shortcomings of the renderer and not the headphones.

Have not tried the mic on this thing yet, will update when I do. Also have not tried these headphones during my workout, mostly so I don't die, I almost got run over by a car due to a set of Bose. Now just a some cheap Maxell earbuds to protect my valuable life.

Bottom line Great sounding headphones.

S9-HD is much improved over the original S9 2009-09-08

By Robert D. Gordon (Atlanta GA)

I have shallow ears that do not hold traditional earbuds well so I first became interested in the original S9 dual ear behind the head model because it allowed me to have an earbud system that would actually stay in my ears. The original S9 model suffered from hard, uncomfortable earpieces, bland stereo sound, only monophonic sound when using it for phone calls, hard to use control buttons, and red coloring that made the headset rather conspicuous. Bluetooth connectivity was at least as good as other units but did suffer from quirks in connectivity more related to Bluetooth itself than this particular model.

I was intrigued by the improvements offered by the S9-HD, including WOW enhanced stereo, redesigned softer earbuds, full stereo when using the headset with a phone, and the sleek black appearance. Also, the control buttons on each side of the headpiece have been nicely redesigned and are much easier to use by feel. I am using the S9-HD with a new iPhone 3GS and a Blackberry 8800 series and so far I am pleased. The music quality improvement is dramatic and with my iPhone approaches my expensive Bose wired headphones. My wife liked them so much I had to get her a set also. Voice quality when making phone calls is adequate, but not as good as the quality when playing music. Bluetooth connectivity has been at least as good as other Bluetooth units I have used. The earbuds are much more comfortable than the ones on the original S9 model, but because the design keeps some pressure on the ears, some users may still find them uncomfortable if worn for long periods. For me, the S9-HD are just fine and the best earbud based solution I have found for my particular ears.

The S9-HD works well with the voice activated dialing available with my Blackberry. iPhone 0S 3.01 does not support Bluetooth voice dialing, but the 3.1 update due out this month (Sep 09) should fix that. Also, as others have mentioned, iPhone 3.01 does not support full Bluetoth AVRCP so the forward and back buttons on the S9-HD do not currently work with an iPhone. One hopes that OS 3.1 will fix that too by implementing the full AVRCP Bluetooth protocol. It has always astonished me that Apple, the king of the portable music player, has not been on top of this from the get go and so slow to implement Bluetooth properly (or at all in iPods) in iTouch and iPhone models.

Great product, immature technology 2009-09-02

By Dane Powell (Austin, Texas USA)

I have been using my S9-HD headphones for about a week now. I am generally very pleased with them- they are well-constructed, fairly comfortable (I would not want to wear them for more than a few hours, but would say the same of any other earbuds), and have excellent audio quality (not quite as good as normal earbuds, but pretty darn close- and anyway, I'm usually wearing these in a situation where audio quality isn't my first priority).

My main gripes I think are with Bluetooth more than this product in particular. It's still just a very immature technology in my opinion- pairing can be very finicky, there are major issues with device compatibility, and the connection quality is wildly unpredictable. For instance, when I am outside, I can use these headphones to listen to music on my Blackberry Curve when it is in my back pocket, but not in my front pocket (the connection drops). However, when I am indoors and paired with my PC, I can listen up to 60 feet away through several cinder-block walls. Also, while you are supposed to be able to pair them with multiple devices (for instance, a cell phone and a PC), for some reason my Blackberry refuses to send stereo audio to them once they have been paired with my PC. I have no idea whether this is a problem with the headphones, my PC, or my phone - I would suspect the phone.

Oh, one last gripe- I believe (but can't be sure) that you normally get multiple sizes of ear cushions with these headphones. I ordered the "Frustration-free packaging" version of them and did NOT receive any spare ear cushions; furthermore, the ones that I received do not look like those pictured on the product (they are much smaller.) As a result, they do not fit comfortably in the ear. I had to contact Motorola to get the "normal", larger size and they are significantly more comfortable and block out much more noise.

The moral of the story is that your mileage may very, but I for one would say that I'm very happy that I bought these.

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