REVIEW: Jawbone Prime Bluetooth Headset

Justin Cauchon May 15, 2009 4

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Aliph has always been known for making superior bluetooth headsets. The Jawbone has proved to consumers to be one of the best headsets all around. On May 2nd, Aliph began selling the new Jawbone Prime at Best Buy Mobile, the Apple Store, Verizon Wireless stores, AT&T stores, and T-Mobile stores around the country. The headset costs $129.99, but it is well worth it if you are a heavy phone user. It is also available internationally in the UK, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, and Canada. The Jawbone Prime offers three major changes from the New Jawbone headset that was released about a year ago. The changes are better audio quality, more comfortable and customizable fit, and a fresh and fun array of color choices. The Jawbone Prime is available in black, brown, and platinum. They also have a limited edition Jawbone EARCANDY edition that comes in yellow, red, green, and purple

The Jawbone Prime has NoiseAssassin 2.0, which is military-grade technology that virtually eliminates all background noise and provides outstanding voice clarity. Another great feature in this headset is the Acoustic Voice Activity Detector (AVAD) which picks up when the Jawbone is not touching your face. This is useful when you may be doing activities that require you to run or be active. The Jawbone Prime handles wind better than most headset we have tried. With a patented voice activity sensor (VAS), the headset claims to remove wind up to 10 MPH. We did a bunch of test on the Jawbone Prime to see what these features lived up to their hype. First we had someone use the Jawbone in the car with the windows up blasting music. Our results with this test were that the Jawbone Prime completely blocked out the music and the voice stayed clear. It was hard for the person using the headset to hear us with such loud music, but on the other end it sounded fine. Our second test was to turn the air conditioning on high in the car and aim it in our face. When the air was aimed on the face, there was no sign of wind on the other end. The only time we had a problem was when we directly aimed the air conditioning at the bluetooth headset, which sounded like there was a lot of wind blowing right into it.

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The Jawbone Prime allows users to customize how the headset fits in their ear. There are many different earbuds to choose from, ones to use with the earloop and ones to use without the earloop. Each choice comes in three different sizes: small, medium, or large. Like the New Jawbone, the Jawbone Prime comes with a regular earloop and a premium leather wrapped earloop. Because of all these options, it allows consumers to use what is most comfortable on their ear. We used the medium earbud with the earloop, as it kept the device secure on our ear. We found that with the New Jawbone, the one from last year, after a few hours of use it would begin irritating our ear. However, with the Jawbone Prime we did not have that problem as Aliph has changes the design of the earbud.

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Aliph has also changed the texture of the headset to make it easier to feel the buttons. On the New Jawbone, it was sometimes difficult to tell where the buttons where and how to answer or hang up a call. With the Jawbone Prime there is a little groove that can be felt while running your finger down the headset. This groove will indicate that where to click to pick up/hang up a call and other commands. We found this useful as it helped us know where to press when we were driving.

Another improvement to the headset is the placing of the LED indicator. This indicator has many uses such as putting it in pairing mode and seeing if the headset is on. With the New Jawbone your finger would block the LED when pressing the button, making it very difficult to tell what color the LED was. Aliph has listened to the customer feedback and has changed this in the Jawbone Prime. With the Jawbone Prime, it is no longer necessary to press right where the LED is to do a command. It is much easier to tell what color the LED indicator is now.

In conclusion we can say the Jawbone Prime is by far the best best bluetooth headset we have ever used to date. While the Jawbone Prime costs a hefty $129.99, if you are a heavy phone user than this is the bluetooth for you. With superior noise cancellation and wind reduction, we can easily recommend this to anyone in the market for a stylish, yet useful bluetooth headset.

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4 Comments »

  1. Michael July 18, 2009 at 5:16 PM -

    Yes….but is there a place that is safe to touch it, for adjustment purposes
    without it disconnecting the call? My jawbone II was horrible for this!

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