Gennum
nXZEN 5500 Plus Bluetooth Headset review
Digital signal processing and long battery life
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The Gennum nXZEN headset
is conservative in appearance and more comfortable in use
than many of its competitors.
Part
of our series on Bluetooth - more articles listed on
the right.
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Priced at $160, Gennum's nXZEN
5500 Plus Bluetooth headset is not cheap. Its premium
price is apparently justified by its digital signal processing
and noise cancelling.
Unfortunately, our testing
showed that the headset's sound quality and noise cancelling was no better - and possibly slightly
inferior to - simply using the phone by itself. It may
sometimes give better results than other Bluetooth headsets, but
in a noisy or windy environment - at least with the Motorola V3 Razr phone we tested with - the phone handset
by itself gives the best
quality sound.
What you Get
The nXZEN 5500 is nicely
packaged in an easy to open display box.
Inside the plastic display
case is the headset
itself, the charger brick, an adapter that plugs in to a USB
port to allow charging from a USB port, a low quality ear bud
and connecting cable to allow you to listen to stereo music, various different sized ear plugs and
a second (different sized) ear hook, as well as a laminated
business card size quick reference card, a 3¼"
CD, and a manual. A very complete set of inclusions.
The small English manual is
26 pages in length and tells you what you need to know to use
the headset.
Feature Chart
Use this information to
quickly understand the capabilities of the unit and to compare
with other units.
Feature Comment |
Cost |
US
recommended retail about $160
Available through
Amazon for $130 |
Ergonomics |
Easy to put
on and take off |
Acceptably
easy to put on, and no harder than any other
ear-loop type headset. And, of course,
easy to take off. |
Easy to use
the control buttons |
There are
four buttons on the unit. There are two
small buttons for volume up and volume down, a
large button on the unit facing out and
a fourth small button on one side of the unit. The layout is such that it is easy to reach and
press these buttons. |
Comfortable
to wear |
Using the
ear loop makes this as comfortable to wear as
most of its competitors, and better than many. |
Can you use
with glasses |
Yes,
especially if you don't use the optional ear
loop. |
Can use with
either ear |
Yes. A
clever feature is the ability to swap the
two volume buttons so that the top one is for
volume up and the bottom one for volume down, no
matter if the unit is in your left or right ear. |
Securely
mounted on ear |
If you use
the around the back of the ear loop, it is
securely mounted. If you just stick it in
your ear without the added security of the loop,
it is less secure. |
How to carry |
Here's
another company that gave no thought to how the
unit is to be carried when not stuck on/in your
ear, an all the more regrettable omission when
considering its premium price.
No way of transporting the unit (and its various
accessories) is provided. |
Weight |
Reasonably light - 0.55
oz |
Ease of Use |
Commands
intuitive and easy to remember |
Another
complicated unit to use; and if you don't use it
all the time you'll for sure forget the
different button pushes and number of beeps, and
what each means.
Don't lose the quick reference card - keep it in
your wallet. And download the manual and
quick reference guide from the
Gennum's website. |
Volume
adjustable |
This is
reasonably intuitive, with two dedicated
buttons, one each for volume up and volume down. |
How fast
does it turn on |
It takes
about twelve seconds to turn on and connect to
the phone. |
Manual |
Well written
in perfect English. |
Support |
Via website
only. |
Pairing
password printed on device |
No (it is
0000 so in an emergency you have a good chance
of guessing what it is!) |
Features |
Battery life |
Up to 7
hours talk or 100 hours standby claimed.
This is average to good battery life. |
Low battery
indicator/signal |
The unit
beeps once every minute to indicate about 15
minutes of battery life remaining. The
beeping increases to once every 10 seconds when
there is less than 5 minutes battery life.
Only the person wearing the headset hears the
beeping, not the person you're speaking to. |
Battery type |
Lithium
polymer.
Although the capacity isn't disclosed, Gennum
say it is a 120 mAh battery and with their
special power management features, they get
about 130 mAh out of it. |
Replaceable
battery? |
No.
Gennum say the battery is guaranteed for a
minimum of 500 charge/discharge cycles, and will
continue to work, with slowly diminishing
capacity, for many more after that.
Bottom line - by the time the battery has died,
you'll probably have bought a new headset. |
Battery
charging method/time |
A brick
charger with cord ends with a special sized
miniature plug to be connected into the unit.
The headset also comes with a cable that plugs
into any USB port at one end and into the
headset at the other end; allowing it to be
charged from any device with a powered USB port.
Charging time is about 2 hours. |
Multi-voltage charger |
Yes. |
Charger
weight/size |
2.6 oz
Reasonably
typical size and weight for
a brick charger. |
Other
charging methods |
Connect it
via the supplied cable to any other device with
a powered USB port, eg your laptop. |
How many
pairings can be stored |
The unit can
store up to three pairings. |
Headset and
hands-free profiles? |
Hands-free
is fully supported. The less common and
older headset profile is not fully supported. |
Audio
profile for computers |
Not
officially, but unofficially probably yes - the
lack of official support being due primarily to
the support hassles on the Windows computer side
of supporting the audio profile. |
Bluetooth
compatibility |
Version 1.2 |
Power/range |
The manual says it is a Class 1 device but this
is apparently a typo. Gennum say the
device is Class 2.
On the
website, it is suggested the device uses only 1
mW of power for long battery life, which would
suggest the unit is actually a Class 3 device.
No claim is made about range. |
Effective
range |
It receives
signals (from the person you are talking to) for
up to two floors with no problems. But it
only sends signals (ie your voice) for a very
short distance - maybe 20', and not through any
obstructions.
This is, however, perfectly adequate for normal
Bluetooth type connections. |
Warranty |
One year. |
Free return |
Retailer
policies will vary. |
Noise
cancelling/DSP |
This is
offered as the nXZEN's strongest feature, and
they use a DSP processor proudly rated at 120
MIPS. How
powerful is 120 MIPS? More than twice as
powerful as a 486DX processor (if you remember
that far back). But a modern Pentium 4 is
about 80 times more powerful (9726 MIPS), which
is not to belittle the power of this DSP.
How well does it work? Maybe it works
better than other headsets, but it works no
better than if using my Motorola Razr V3 phone by itself,
and much the same as using the corded headset
that came with the phone. Here is a 363kB
WAV file allowing you to hear the
different sound
qualities in a quiet environment, and here
is a 519kB WAV file allowing you to hear the
different sound
qualities in a noisy environment.
The noisy environment had a mix of white noise,
wind, low frequency noise, and two radio
stations playing, so as to throw an impressive
mix of different sounds at the headset's
processing abilities.
Gennum's website has some impressive sound files
comparing their headset's noise cancelling to
that of an unnamed competitor. We don't
know how to reconcile their sound files with the
noisy environment test above, and repeatedly tested
two different sample headsets from Gennum in
a range of different noisy environments.
In all cases the headset was never any better
than the phone handset by itself, and sometimes
the sound processing eliminated much of my voice
along with background noise. |
Sound
quality |
When talking
to other people, they reported my voice sounded
perhaps slightly quieter than normal, and there seems to be no
way to adjust this.
The sound quality of the person at the other end
of the call seemed fine in the headset.
You can hear the sound quality for yourself by
clicking on the two sample files above. |
Capabilities |
Turning on
and off |
You turn the
unit on and off by pressing the side button.
Press the side button and wait for two flashes,
and the unit switches on, making a tone in your
ear. Press
the side button and wait for four flashes (or
four beeps followed by five tones if you're
listening) then release and your unit should be
switched off.
At times I completely lost track of whether I
was turning the unit on or off.
Kinda makes you wish they had a simple on/off
switch, doesn't it.... |
Auto connect |
Yes. Note that earlier build levels did
not support auto connect (an essential feature
in our opinion) but current units support it
perfectly. |
Voice tag
support |
Supported.
Press the pinch button until one beep sounds and
then say the name that you've previously
recorded. |
Last number
redial |
Yes, but
only when using Hands-Free, not Headset profile
phones.
To
activate, press and hold the pinch button for
two beeps. |
Transfer
call to/from phone |
In theory,
this is simple. Just push the pinch button
until it beeps once, and the call will switch
from the phone to the headset, or vice versa.
But in
practice, it proved very difficult to get right.
The same command is also interpreted as a
'flash' command for swapping between two calls,
or answering one call and putting the other call
on hold; a slightly briefer press of the pinch
button is interpreted as the mute command; and a
slightly longer press of the button is a last
number redial command.
Maybe I
wasn't getting the timing of the button push
exactly right, and/or maybe the phone and
headset weren't always on and connected, but
whatever the reason, I sometimes had difficulty
transferring calls. |
Call
waiting/Three way calling |
Call waiting
is supported with the Hands-Free profile.
Press and hold the pinch button for one beep to
either place the first call on hold and answer
the second call, and/or to swap between callers.
Three way calling is apparently not supported. |
Call reject |
Apparently
not supported. |
Call
answer/end |
Yes.
To answer a call, either press and hold the
pinch button for one beep, or briefly press and
release the side button. To end a call,
either press and hold the pinch button for three
beeps, or briefly press and release the side
button. |
Mute |
Yes.
Briefly press and release the pinch button to
turn mute on or off. While in mute mode,
the headset beeps regularly to advise you of its
mute status. |
Subjective |
Attractive
design |
Reasonably
so. It is conservative and timeless, and not
ostentatious or unappealing. |
Flashing
indicators on standby |
No.
Although a blue light flashes when the unit is
in use, there is no indication as to if it is
switched on or not. As a result, I was
never quite sure if I was turning the headset on
or off. It
would also be very helpful to know if the
headset was actively connected to a phone or not
- another thing I was never quite sure of. |
Size |
Average/normal. |
Summary |
This is an attractive unit
priced towards the top end of the market, but
which offers no improvement in sound quality
or noise cancelling than when using the phone
handset by itself. |
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Using the Gennum nXZEN 5500 Headset
First, the good news.
The nXZEN 5500 scores acceptably well in the comfort category.
It is easy to put on and off your ear, sits there securely, and
the design of the unit seems such that it will not become loose
or insecure after repeated wearings.
But now for the real world
use of the unit. I found it confusing and difficult to
remember all the different commands and controls, and was never
sure if the unit was switched on or off, and/or whether it was
connected to my phone or not.
The sound
quality experienced by people I was talking to was similar to
using the test Motorola V3 phone handset by
itself in quiet environments.
In noisier environments, the
active signal processing of the unit could be detected - but not
only was it eliminating some of the background noise, it was
also eliminating much of my voice as well, with the net result
not always being an improvement. While the unit does offer some noise
cancelling abilities - and so is probably better than BT
headsets that don't - it was no better than that offered by the handset
alone, or (to my surprise) the regular corded headset that was
provided free with the phone.
Connecting with phones
Easy. Once you've
paired the unit with a phone, any time you turn the unit on, it
will look for and connect with your phone if the phone is also
on and in range.
This is convenient and
simple.
Playing Music
This is a clever additional
feature of the unit. A cable plugs into a music source (eg
MP3 player), into the nXZEN 5500 (into its recharging socket),
and also runs to an ear bud. Put the ear bud in your other
ear, and you can hear the music through both the headset and the
ear bud.
If a call comes in, the
nXZEN switches to the call, but you have to pull the ear bud out
of your other ear (or listen to music in one ear and the caller
in the other). Sound quality is far from excellent, but
for casual use it makes it convenient to both listen to
music and be ready to take phone calls without having to juggle
too many wires and headsets.
Summary
Gennum's nXZEN unit has some
good features, and is comfortable to wear. Like all other
BT headsets, it is regrettably complicated to use, and its noise
cancelling does not work well.
The unit can be purchased
from
Amazon for $130, and has a recommended retail of $160.
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Originally published
10 Feb 2006, last update
21 Jul 2020
You may freely reproduce or distribute this article for noncommercial purposes as long as you give credit to me as original writer.
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