Review: Samsung WEP850 Bluetooth Headset

Back in November of last year, I bought a Bluetooth headset to use with my phone before my trip out to California for a few days — and because just holding the touchscreen phone up to the ear wasn’t working quite as well.  I didn’t know what to get.  Oh, I had some ideas, like noise canceling would be nice and it supporting the same Bluetooth version (the latest one) as my phone.  Other than that, I was relatively clueless, but I knew that I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something that sucked.

Yeah.  So much for that.  :-/

I went into the Radio Shack in the mall & looked at what they had, talked with the sales person, and wound up going with the Samsung WEP850 partly because it had the two things I wanted, partly because it looked the most comfortable of the different ones they had, and partly because it was on sale at the time.  In an unrelated note, I went to Radio Shack because I knew they were out in CA as well and if something went wrong, or I got out there and wanted to exchange it for a different one, I could.

Things went swimmingly.  I talked with Mom on it for a long while and she didn’t have any problems hearing or understanding me.  And on my end, I didn’t have any trouble hearing her over the car noise — which was a concern as that was an issue with some wired headsets I’d used in the past.  (Granted, those cost one seventh what this one did.)

Jump forward a few months and I’ve ran into a few people here and there who’ve complained either about not being able to hear me or that my voice was sounding garbled and distorted.  All the while, I’m hearing them perfectly clearly.

A few of the people who’ve said things have been on Sprint cell phones.  (I’m on AT&T.)  But some have been on office phones (behind a digital switchboard on digital, IP-type, phones).  And at least one of the Sprint people has said that sometimes I’m just fine, but other times I’m not.  When I’m not, we hang up and one of us calls the other right back.  A lot of times that fixes it.

So.  I’m at a loss.  I think the voice quality of this headset is great.  The volume is loud enough (at least when it’s paired with my HTC Tilt 2) for me to hear the other caller, even with some environmental sounds.  And (when I have a good signal) the caller can hear me clearly.

But, as a result of the trouble I’ve had, I never use it when making an important business call.  Which sucks, because most of the time I’m needing my hands to take notes and the phone’s microphone is really directional — move the phone a half inch and they can’t hear me — so I’m left using speaker quite a lot.

Moving past the call quality, for a moment, and into functionality and you’ll find a different story.

The manual says to press the “talk” button (on the headset) to answer a call that’s coming in.  OK.  That works.  It says to press the same button to hang up the call that you’re currently on.  OK.  That works.  But, wait.  It also says that while you’re on a call, press that same button to take a second call that’s coming in.  Yeah.  That doesn’t work so great.  I’ve had it hang up on the first caller without answering the second.

You use the “talk” button — holding it down for a long period of time, instead of a quick press — to turn the headset on or off.  That works, but it seems to me that the delay in turning on is extremely too long — it’s about 8-10 seconds and it’d seem that 1 or 2 at the most would do.

This same “talk” button is also supposed to be used to switch between phones, if you have the headset paired with two phones.  I just can’t see why they tried making one button do so much.  Remembering all that the one thing does, or hold it down X-long for this and Y-long for that, seems to make it needlessly complicated for the user whereas simply adding a second button (or heck, toggle switch) would be easier — especially for the switching phone bit.  Want to switch phones, flip the toggle switch just seems to make more cognitive sense to me.

Other than the “talk” button, there’s one other button on the headset.  That is supposed to control volume.  Press it on the one side to increase, the other to decrease.  I’ve done that, but haven’t found that the volume level has changed at all.  Pressing both sides at once does actually turn the indicator light on or off, as the manual indicates it should.

Battery life is good.  I’ve not, to my knowledge, had it actually die on me while using it.  But I keep it charged — if I’ve used it, or just had it on for the day, I’ll charge it, just in case.

Lastly, it’s still just as comfortable as it was when I first got it.  If anything, it’s more comfortable now that I’ve gotten used to having it in my ear.

So.  Do I recommend you get this headset?  Nope.  Do I recommend that you don’t ever consider it?  Nope to that as well.  Am I going to run out and replace it?  Heck, no!  I don’t have that type of money.  This thing cost around $70!

In the end, it works for me, not as good as I’d liked and doesn’t seem to fully work as the manual indicates, but it does let me use my phone in a hands-free manner… some of the time.  And that’s really all I wanted.  I probably really would’ve been better off just getting the same cheap $20-$25 headset that my manager (at the time) got.  But I figured that something newer would be better.  Yeah… Perhaps not so.