Motorola HT820 Stereo Bluetooth Headset Review

Motorola is the largest manufacturer of Bluetooth earpieces for mobile phones and the second largest mobile phones manufacturer worldwide, and we couldn’t have missed the company models in our comparison of stereo earpieces for listening of music from a phone without cables. Here we have the HT820 – the Motorola's solution is comparatively standard, with supra-aural and behind-the-neck design. It comes in a pleasantly looking and attention attracting round box with transparent lid.
There you will find:

• Earpieces

• Battery charger

• Connection cable with 3.5 mm source

• Carrying pouch

We are particularly impressed by the carrying pouch – it looks very well made and is soft (made of comparatively thick textile) and quite pleasant by touch. Unfortunately, putting the earpieces in it is not the easiest task.

As we already mentioned above, Motorola HT820 is with behind-the-neck design just like Nokia BH-601 and Jabra BT620, and this determines the resemblance of its shape to the other two earpieces. Unlike them, the earpieces themselves are neither circular nor angular, but are of oval shape extending backwards. They have a headband which is not very flexible with the Motorola logo in the middle of its back part which will stand in the middle of your neck when you wear it. HТ820 are made of plastic in several nuances of the gray color: the left and right earpieces are in combination of gray and silver and the surface is black with numerous gray spots. There are circular emblems on each of them with the Motorola logo, which are in fact, buttons switching on lights. In operating regime the Motorola logo flashes in blue. The interesting thing here is that first flashes one of them, then the other, then the second again and the first again, not abruptly but very smoothly and with overlapping.

These buttons here are Call key (on the left) and play/pause (on the right) which are slightly raised and their position is easily felt – pushing them is soft but with sufficient tactile response. There is a coupe of buttons on the upper side on each earpiece. They are for sound control on the left side and for song change on the right side, respectively. Unlike Jabra 620, the buttons are not in a common cell but at a little distance from each other. Distinguishing one from the other is easy, pressing them – too.


The softener over the earpieces is somewhat different from the other models we have used. With the three models (Nokia BH-601, Jabra BT620 and Plantronics 590A) there is a complete soft cover of something like foam; it is not so with HT820. The very speaker is covered with a fine mesh and there is a comparatively soft ring of artificial leather which stands practically close to your face. For more convenient earpieces wearing a rubber softener is provided at the beginning of the headband since in this part it touches your ears or your face and we would want them to be quite soft, anyway.



In the simplified design with a few elements there are more things on the right earpiece than on the left one. Here are the microphone, a miniUSB charging port and 2.5 mm jack for connection to a 3.5 mm sound source to the cable of the set.

Functionality:

The too well familiar standard pairing procedure must be performed before you can start using the wireless earpieces. The left button (call) must be held depressed until the logo in it is permanently lit in blue. Then you have to search for the earpieces by the device you are going to connect them to and input 0000 when an authorization code is required.
The Quick Starting Guide will explain to you that you can simultaneously connect a music player and a telephone using the first one for music and the second one for wireless conversations. This will be possible after performing the pairing operation twice.

The inconvenience is that there is no sound to indicate that you have increased the sound volume to the maximum.

The right buttons are used for musical functions management via the AVRCP profile. The big one with the Motorola logo makes a pause and starts the music and the couple changes to the next and previous song. Unfortunately they cannot be used for rewinding through the current track.

Performance:

We were disappointed by the sound of HT820 while listening to music – it is weak and is not clearly heard and even muffled in a noisy environment like in the street. The quality is poor: the bass is not stressed, it lacks any detail whatever and the lowest frequencies are not played but cause crackling in some cases. The middle frequencies are represented poorly; the vocals sound very unrealistically and without detail, and the high ones sound metallically, without fineness and speed. As a whole we don’t like how the earpieces work.

Things are better during conversation (strangely enough, it is just the opposite with the other stereo earpieces): despite the permanent weak noise we can hear quite clearly and distinctly, and the voices sound realistically. The sound volume is above the average in both directions and we are very well heard on the other side, too.

In our Battery Test, the Motorola headset worked for 990 minutes, which is 16 and a half hours - this is very good result and exceeds the battery time of most phones (in music mode) about twice. This means that with average usage of about 2 hours a day, you will probably be able to use the headphones for a week before you have to charge them again.

The Range was also excellent - 72 meters or about 220 feet! In our standard Range test the HT820 is the total leader, scoring the best result among all Bluetooth devices we've used. Good job, Moto!



Comfort:

Unfortunately the sound is not on sufficient level to justify the discomfort of wearing the earpieces. When we put them on at first we thought they were much more comfortable than the competitors, but in a while we knew it was not so. Only 20 minutes later we felt a pinch at the back part of the ears due to the pressure of the rubber of the headband and we wanted to take the earpieces off our heads. After a total of 35-40 minutes of wearing a real relief is felt when you take them off.

Conclusion:

Interesting as design, HT820 have standard functionality and the only pleasant impression is rendered by the lamps that are tuned on and off smoothly and in synchrony. The good sound quality during conversation compensates only to a small degree for the terrible sound when listening to music and for the discomfort caused by the earpieces after about half an hour of wearing.