Motorola HS-850 Bluetooth Headset

Impression/General Use

So how did it do in the real world? Very good and horribly bad. Let me try and explain?.it really depends on the phone that you use to match up with this headset. I first tried it with the Motorola RAZR V3 and it paired up quickly and easily. I could answer the phone within two rings of hearing the phone ring?really quick! The voice dialing worked to perfection. When on the phone with others, I could easily walk 20 feet away with no static. In fact, people never knew I was talking on a cordless headset.

But when I tried to get this headset to work with my Treo 650 it was a disaster. After the initial pairing, which took 3-4 tries, if I received a phone call, I could never hear the phone ring in the headset and answering the phone took multiple tries. Most times if I didn?t completely miss the call, the caller would already be saying “helloooo??” The transferring of an outgoing call to the headset had the same disastrous results.

You could wear this headset all day, as I did, without getting ear fatigue. It is very light and the earloop doesn?t pinch. I wanted to tighten the loop around my ear though?it just didn?t as secure as I wanted. I even shook my head to see if I could make it fly off, but it stayed put. For those of you with glasses or who wear sunglasses often, the HS850 will not get in the way at all.

The volume in the speaker was clear but I wish it had a bit more umph. I had to turn my radio all the way down in my vehicle so as to not miss a word. The microphone, while not noise canceling is very good and did a very good job of picking up my voice and not road noise or wind.

Ken’s Final Thoughts

I could make the HS850 work with the Treo 650 but it?s not a good fit. Although when used on the Motorola V551, V600, and RAZR V3 the HS850 headset was a perfect match. Hopefully in the future Motorola and other companies will work closer together to make sure different brands work together correctly. Bluetooth has set standards (1.2 for example) that don’t change, so when a phone offers bluetooth then all devices should work in harmony (in an ideal world). Sadly that is not the case today, as we have found out during testing.

It seems pretty obvious that the limitations of this headset (like many computer peripherals) is caused directly by what phone it is paired with. The way the Treo handles BT devices varies greatly than the way the V3 handles things. I recommend that if you are looking for a BT headset, and you own a different phone from the four we listed here in the conclusion that you try it out the headset first to see which best matches your phone.

One last thing to touch on is the color of the HS-850 headset. In North America the headset comes in gray and in Europe it is available in black. Nothing else differs in the technology or features, but Motorola’s marketing team found that different regions prefer different colors.

This is easily the best Bluetooth enabled headset that Motorola has in its arsenal. It has the perfect combination of long battery life, light on the ear, very good sound and speaker quality. The speaker could be a tad bit louder, and the ear clip, while secure, could be a bit more snug. If you don?t have Motorola phone, make sure you try it before you buy.