Motorola H300 Bluetooth Headset Review

The Motorola H300 represents Motorola's idea of low-end wireless headset: relatively small device using standard AAA batteries as power source, achieving incredible battery times at a price that's reduced due to the lack of rechargeable battery and a charger for it in the box that contains the headset itself, a small user guide and a single Energizer Alkaline battery.

Design: 

The headset has rather simple design with rectangular form with short boom microphone, as it should get a whole AAA battery inside. Its dimensions are average but it's not the case with its weight (25 grams / 0.88 oz.) that leads it to the category “heavy” for a Bluetooth headset, mainly because of the battery inside.

H300 next to Jabra BT250	H300 and Jabra BT250	H300 and Jabra BT250

H300 Weight comparison

Its front side is made of grey glossy plastic and has metal blue decorative surface over it. The back is done of black matte plastic with rubber around the earpiece. We didn't like that the decorative part on the front easily catches fingerprints and ruins the rather stylish design.

For operation with the headset you have three keys: a pair of volume buttons on the top and the bottom, either of which can be assigned as Volume Up depending on the ear used and a call key. The volume keys are almost completely flush, while the Call Button is slightly raised and you can feel where it is. All keys are hard to press, but with good feedback.

The back houses the microphone, the earpiece and the earhook. The earpiece is encircled with rubber but it's relatively big and doesn't have in-ear design. The earhook in the middle can be rotated at four steps, which helps for easier attaching to the ear – open it, put it on, and press it to close.

Pairing:

The pairing procedure is as simple as it could be: you just hold the Call key while the headset is turned of for a few seconds untill the LED shows solid blue light; search it through your phone, enter pass key 0000 and it's done, indicated by 10 fast flashings of the LED; the whole operation took us less than a minute! Once the headset is in standby mode it will flash in Blue every 5 seconds.

The LED light flashes only in blue, and so alerting about low battery is performed with a sound in the earpiece (5 rapid high tones every one minute) and so you won't be notified if the headset is not on your ear.

In standby mode a single press of the Call key will activate the voice control of your phone, while holding it for a couple of seconds and releasing it will redial the last dialed number – be aware, as keeping it pressed for a longer period, you will hear the sound for shutting the headset off.

During a call the H300 performed well. The incoming voice was slightly muffled but the volume was above the average and you could hear it if the environment is not very noisy. If it featured in-ear design, its sound would be lound enough for any environment. A very disappointing thing was that a constant noise was present. The other party heard us with no noise, but the voices were still not very realistic - the microphone of the H300 made us voice sounding thicker.

Battery:

The H300 is powered by a single AAA battery instead of rechargeable one, and you can feel it by the weight. Using a non-rechargable AAA battery you can achieve serious talk-time and once it's dead, you can easily replace it with any on-the-shelf battery without waiting for charging. This gives the incredible 13 hours of talk time which can hardly be reached with internal battery. 

Battery times The range we could use the headset at, was very low, reaching just 18 feet. This is worse than even the headsets with ultra-small size we've tested - the AX2 and BH800.

Range

Comfort:

It's not the most user-friendly headset, but opening the earhook helps for attaching the H300 even with a single hand. Once it is on your ear, it is sitting there comfortably; unfortunately it is not very solidly held and may fell off if you shake your head more vigorously.
After about an hour of wearing it after we felt a slight discomfort but it was not a big problem to keep it on. Still you can feel it in every moment it spends on your head, and won't be in love with it for long. Design is also not its positive side – it looks mediocre and kinda funny.

Conclusion:

The H300 offers pretty much for its price! Thanks to the AAA-battery the manufacturer reduces the price and improves the battery times, but gets some extra weight can be felt when you wear it for longer period of time. If you are looking for a Bluetooth headset on a budget, or for one with incredible battery times, the H300 is very good option, but in other case it is just mediocre as it doesn't have any special features