The Inquirer: Moving backwards going forwards
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Here's a useless wireless headset
Product: HBH-DS22o
Supplier: Sony Ericsson
Web:
www.sonyericsson.com
Price: around £49.98 (inc VAT)
Tech Specs:
here
Battery life: Not specified
but reasonable
IN THEORY, the HBH-DS220 from Sony Ericsson is a great idea. A Bluetooth stereo headset that enables you to listen wirelessly to your digital music collection. In practice operation is both fiddly and unreliable.
Its maker would almost certainly argue that this device is aimed specifically at owners of Sony Ericsson mobile phones. However, if it had been designed properly it should have worked equally well with other makes of handset ? especially those from the market leader ? Nokia.
Unfortunately, while the INQ did actually get the HBH-DS220 to work properly, the amount of effort expended hardly made it a worthwhile exercise.
There are two main facilities which the HBH-DS220 provides. First, it acts as a stereo headset so you can listen to music and second, it acts as a handsfree earpiece so you can make and receive phone calls. Plus it also acts as a remote, so you can control your MP3 player wirelessly, too.
These facilities are achieved through support for standard Bluetooth profiles ? such as A2DP for stereo audio input and AVRC for remote control.
To get the HBH-DS220 going, you first need to pair it with a compatible electronic device. It uses the default Bluetooth passcode ? '0000' [four zeros]. The pairing process was temperamental, but the INQ managed to pair it successfully with a Nokia N95, for example.
There was nothing actually wrong with the sound quality when playing back MP3s. It was actually quite good. However, you just couldn't rely on it working perfectly every time ? especially when using it to remotely control the Nokia's built-in MP3 player.
There's another hidden facility which the HBH-DS220 provides. When acting as a hands-free handset, you can push the dedicated 'phone' button. This triggers voice activated dialling but it only worked in a quiet environment ? not inside a vehicle.
Incidentally, the HBH-DS200 is perfectly capable of working with a Windows based PC. This is where things get very complicated. In order for it to function using stereo, the built-in Bluetooth chip or Bluetooth dongle need to support A2DP.
The INQ dug out its favourite Bluetooth dongle ? from Ezurio (formerly TDK) and then realised we'd lost the associated software. So a beta copy of Bluesoleil from IVT was brought to bear. This got us going nicely and worked with the standard Windows Media Player, for example.
Some readers might think the INQ is being unnecessarily harsh on Sony Ericsson but consider this ? when Motorola introduced a whole range of Bluetooth earpieces a few years back, they'd work with anything. Not just Motorola phones.
Overall, the HBH-DS220 promises much but delivers poorly. ?
The Good
Great stereo sound quality
The Bad
Questionable operation with non-SE handsets
The Ugly
Operation is infuriating
Bartender's verdict
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Great demonstration of how not to do a review. Did you decide not to try the SE headset with an SE phone for any particular reason?
Did you consider that non-SE phones and devices implement their own non-standard protocols to ensure buyer lock-in (like Microsoft always do)?
How about being specific about the difficulty you had with the controls, and saying which headset managed to provide better controls.
Come on, reviewer, I can only give 1 beer for your review technique - back to school for you.
hey anyone can tell me how to pair HBH-DS220 with windows based laptop.
I think this article is unnecessarily harsh on this product.
Maybe, this review was true when the bluetooth support was not perfected and the author came across some incompatibilities with his Nokia phone.
I recently bought this bluetooth headset and it worked flawlessly with both my PC and my phone (HTC Touch Elfin)
The sound quality is quite good and it provides you a stereo 3.5mm socket to connect your music systems or high end headphones.
Still quite a unique product in the market. I didn't come across any problems so far.
Wao this is the worst Inq bear ever give to a product.
As i'm going to use this with a Sony Ericsson phone after all...
What exactly did you dislike...the fact that it worked, or perhaps the fact that the sound quality was good. What exactly was 'very complicated' about it? I just don't get it, maybe i'm an idiot, or maybe you just don't get across the point of why it's only worth 3 points.

If your going to go to the effort of writing a 'review', why not do it properly and allow people to form an opinion from facts.

I recently purchased the model up from this, and using the devices menu system can be somewhat cumbersome, but what do you expect from something that has a screen about the size of your fingernail and allows you to connect to multiple devices, remotly control music you stream from some other device (be it a phone or PC or MP3 player) and allow you to answer calls seamlessly.

i'd give it 7 myself. The only real downside is that once you leave the range of the music playing source, you have to manually reconnect when back in range (although there is a good reason for that, which i cant be bothered to go into)
I have the previous version (DS970 I think) which is also great in theory, but generally just a PITA to use. Once it's working it's great - good for listening to music without having to get the phone out of your pocket to change tracks/volume/pause and as a handsfree in the car, but the buttons are fiddly and charging the damn thing is difficult at best because the charger only clips on one side and so tends to pop off...
Hmm, yes, very good and well researched. Almost.

N95 has the most buggy software ever released for a handset. I'd be surprised if it worked with a wired Nokia headset to be honest. 

Now, back to bluetooth. Bluetooth and the original plans for bluetooth were dreamed up by a small group of likeminded individuals. This group of individuals included technicians from Ericsson. Bluetooth was thus created then GIVEN to other manufacturers to promote world peace, love, happiness and compatibility with all other devices. So what did these other manufacturers do with this intellectual property? They changed it subtly so some stuff would work and others just wouldn't no matter how hard you tried.

It's a well known fact that most moto handsets cannot send images to other devices which aren't moto. It's also well known that Nokia want you to buy Nokia stuff. Why wouldn't they? They want to remain questionable market leaders. Now before I get accused of being a fanboy for SE, I actually carry a HTC device, with which my Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 works a TREAT. 

Other than that, very detailed.