The Moto carbon footprint is still pretty large as this tiny headset came in a fairly large box, so our first impressions were perhaps a little swayed as such a small headset appeared from a mound of packaging. This small disc was the Motorola H9 miniblue headset which measures just 30 x 23mm around the size of a 10p piece and weighs only 7.5 grams. Motorola have opted for an in ear design which is more commonly seen in MP3 player earphones as opposed to Bluetooth headsets, what they claim is that the semi seal between the earpiece and ear make for a better call with less background noise.

So after making sure our test H9 had a full charge we set about some basic tests with our Nokia N95 to check that it paired finer and that the 10 meter Bluetooth range was achievable, both passed without drama. Our initial test calls proved successful and very clear but then we were still in the office, hardly a challenging environment. We decided to head our with LP driving to see if a bit of serious road noise would put pay to this mini Bluetooth headset.

Once moving at a barely legal speed we dialled the office and started a conversation which mostly seemed to consist of comments on LP's rather outlandish driving style. We did find that the incoming audio to the H9 was crisp, loud and of a very high quality, the in ear design was certainly doing it's job and almost as well as a Shure in ear earphone! The outbound call quality and the reception of our spoken words was not such a roaring success as more ambient noise managed to spill into the conversation probably due to the location of the ear canal microphone in the small H9 earpiece compared to those headsets with more of a boom which is closer to the mouth. That said we could still be heard and the conversation was possible even at high speed with a good deal of road noise.

The Motorola H9 does not have any noise suppression as such an relies on this tight fit in order to both provide a good audio quality and to cling to the side of your head. Indeed there is no over the ear loop and it relies entirely on the firm fit to make sure it doesn't pop out of your ear and get lost! The downside is that not everyone will be able to get comfortable with the in ear design, it does ship with a range of different size tips which makes getting a fit easier, but the deep in ear feel will not be to everyone's taste.

Also a rather unkind comment made in the office but one we just had to mention was that when held side on the H9 does look like a particular section of the Manneken Pis statue in Brussels, we'll let you work out which bit but beware some will notice the resemblance.

Battery life is a little on the short side with just a 1.5 talk time and around a 100hr standby time, hardly surprising given that there isn't much room for a battery in the Miniblue design. Motorola try and make up for this by including a changing base which also acts as a battery, the idea being you charge both the headset and the base from the mains and then are able to charge the headset from the base battery. They use this to claim7.5hrs talk time but of course fail to point out how often you will have to return the H9 to it's base which you would have to carry round with you.

Operation is simple despite the small size of the H9, the large multifunction button (MFB) can be used to answer and end calls plus there are 2 smaller buttons to adjust volume.

Priced at a rather high $179 and expected to be over £100 when it hits the UK you are certainly going to pay for the small size of the Moto H9, lets face it anything that David Beckham advertises is unlikely to be cheap!

Published - 07/05/2007

More Bluetooth Headset Reviews-

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