Bluetooth headsets are now common place, gone are the worries of looking a bit Alan partridge which is just as well because he is starting to look like the pioneer of mobile headsets lets just hope string back driving gloves don't make a comeback!

Sony Ericsson produce a number of headsets and we took a test spin with the HBH-35  Bluetooth Headset which is the mid range offering from the Swedish Japanese collective, it certainly fits well and we can honestly say you can forget you are wearing it, at 28 grams its not the lightest but the HBH-35 does seem to have been engineered to fit. The boom is as small as it could be and contains a high quality microphone which deals well with background noise, this snakes round to the main earpiece which has a rubberised loop which sits behind the ear, the HBH-35 can fit on either ear but comes setup for a right ear the process to make the change is simple and well explained in the supplied handbook.

The unit has 3 main controls the answer button can be used to answer and end calls, plus it can also active voice dialling if your phone supports it, you can also undertake a more complex operation of transferring calls to the phones normal speaker / mic and visa versa, useful if you are in the car on the headset and then park up and want to move back to the phone.

Operating using the Bluetooth standard the HBH-35 has a range of 10 meters but this maybe reduced indoors through walls etc but with a minimum of 5 meters, the headset needs to be "paired" the process of setting up a partnership between Bluetooth devices, this will allow the HBH-35 to work with up to 6 Bluetooth enabled devices, not just phones either we tested it with a BT enabled laptop and MSN messenger it worked a treat. The pairing process also ensures that only your phone can work with your headset, once paired when the phone rings it will contact its paired headset which also has a ring tone which can be adjusted on the headset by two controls either side of the earpiece. The headset will use either the "headset" profile or the hands free profile of your phone both will work well and the hands free offers slightly more functions, battery life is excellent with 125 hrs standby and 5 hrs talk time between charges which take just 1.5hrs for a full charge, the charger is supplied with the headset but you can also use a Sony Ericsson charger supplied with your phone.

We were very impressed with the Sony Ericsson HBH-35 and at sub £70 it offers a lot of gadget for your money while keeping you legal while driving and at the same time achieving the most difficult of tasks making an Alan Partridge boom mike seems acceptably cool.

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