techcheck

Until recently, I have used in-ear earphones to listen to music, but these have grown increasinly annoying as wires always tangle and at times are impractical, especially when exercising. Therefore, I decided to buy a pair of wireless headphones. I thought to myself that it may be wise to get some Bluetooth headphones as these could be used on my Blackberry/laptop without plugging in an adapter.

Logitech Freepulse headphones fitted the bill. It utilises Bluetooth, but comes with a 3.5mm jack (standard headphone) transmitter, which allows me to turn nearly any audio into Bluetooth-transmitted audio. I have plugged this transmitter into everything ranging from my TV to my DS, most importantly, to my iPod.

Charger

The headphones and transmitter are powered by a non-removable, rechargeable battery. You get a mains power adapter to do this, which isn’t a universal one. I find this a little annoying, because it makes the headphones impractical for long journeys where they may run out of charge.

A mini-USB power socket on the headphones and transmitter would be useful, as it would allow everything to be charged by laptops or ‘emergency’ chargers.

Sound quality

THe sound quality seems to be quite good, although it is better when the transmitter is used than a direct AD2P connection. Using a AD2P connection from my laptop to the headphones, the sound quality, quite frankly, is terrible. On the other hand, if I use the transmitter, there is little difference to any other half-decent pair ear or headphones.

Sound quality is completely satisfactory, although it gets pretty poor at higher volumes.

Connection quality

The advertised 10 meters is hugely unrealistic. I often struggle at 5 meters and if I’m walking quickly, it can be a bit unreliable.

Generally, connection quality doesn’t pose too great a problem as any unreliability at very short ranges is rare and so are the circumstances where you would use them over a distance larger than a few meters.

The instruction manual provides no instructions on how to pair the headphones with devices besides the transmitter, but it can be done by holding the power button on the headphones for 15 seconds, until the LED turns into a flashing blue and red which indicates that it’s discoverable.

Design

The headphones, in my opinion, are quite attractive and buttons are well-hidden. It also has invovative volume control, which involves a very subtle up and down button underneath one of the phones.

The band which holds it together, unusually for headphones, goes behind the neck. This definitely looks odd, but it’s much more comfortable.

Other points

Even if these aren’t the world’s best headphones, the convenience of the Bluetooth is fantastic.

Price

The headphones and transmitter cost about 55 USD.

The beta test is beginning to ramp up. Tonight we have word that the beta downloader is in action and delivering data to those that have access to it (via WotLK Wiki). This is an obvious indicator that Blizzard has switched over to the beta testing phase, and that they are getting ready to send out invites.

Additionally the beta page at beta.worldofwarcraft.com now shows beta information and activity. If you do get a beta key, you can use this page to sign up and gain access to the client files. It would be a good time to start keeping and eye out for a real beta invite, and let us know if you get one if you’re one of the first lucky few. However at the same time, please be very careful not to fall for any beta scams.

Here’s the official trailer