8com
Wireless BH220 Bluetooth Headset
Great low price and average performer
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The BH-220 Bluetooth
headset marketed by 8com combines a low price with a
lightweight compact design.
Part
of our series on Bluetooth - more articles listed on
the right.
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8com's BH220 Bluetooth headset
is moderately simple to understand and to use, and also offers
an Audio profile enabling it to be used with audio applications
on a computer as well as with cell phones.
Compact in size, and affordable
in price, but a low-end unit.
What you Get
The unit comes attractively
packaged in a nice display box, although amusingly the largest
picture on its front shows a picture of a man using a regular
cell phone without Bluetooth headset.
Inside the box comes the
headset unit itself, plus the ear 'hook' piece that wraps around
one's ear to hold it securely in place.
Six different ear pieces are
included (two each of three different designs) although the
unit can also be used without any earpiece if you prefer, with
it simply resting lightly on the exterior of your ear.
A multi-voltage 'brick' type plug into the
wall power charger is also included, with a cable that plugs
into the headset to charge its internal battery.
We are advised that the unit
also now comes with a car charger.
There is a small drawstring
pouch which can be used to store the power supply (and
conceivably the headset, too) and also a neck loop strap for
carrying the headset while using/wearing it.
Lastly there is a small
eight page manual. This seems to be a generic manual,
because there is no information about manufacturer or US contact
information. However, there is a brief reference to
Vodafone which makes one suspect that the unit is also supplied
to Vodafone somewhere in the world.
Feature Chart
Use this information to
quickly understand the capabilities of the unit and to compare
with other units.
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Feature Comment |
|
Cost |
$44.95 |
|
Ergonomics |
|
Easy to put
on and take off |
Reasonably
easy - average to better than average |
|
Easy to use
the control buttons |
Reasonably
difficult to use the volume buttons, main
function button is easy to find and operate, but
because functions variously rely on a short or
long push of this button, I sometimes would have
problems due to pressing a short push too long,
or a long push to briefly, and having the unit
misunderstand my request. |
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Comfortable
to wear |
Yes -
perfectly comfortable |
|
Can you use
with glasses |
With
some difficulty - the 'hook' that goes around
the ear is slim so it is possible to have both
the ear piece of a set of glasses and of this
headset around the ear simultaneously |
|
Can use with
either ear |
Yes |
|
Securely
mounted on ear |
Reasonably
secure. A little bit of wobble if you move
your head rapidly from side to side, none if you
nod your head up and down. There is no
suggestion that the unit might fall off. |
|
How to carry |
Neck loop
strap provided, but - ooops - there is no
mounting loop anywhere on the headset to attach
the strap to! The loop can be tied to the
ear piece though.
Drawstring
pouch for charger also provided |
|
Weight |
Light - 0.5
oz |
|
Ease of Use |
|
Commands
intuitive and easy to remember |
Generally
not very, but not particularly worse than any
other BT headset |
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Volume
adjustable |
Yes - this
is easy and good, with two separate buttons
labeled + and - |
|
How fast
does it turn on |
Reasonably
quickly, but synching up with the phone hand set
is an extra step |
|
Manual |
Poorly
written in Chinese flavored English |
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Support |
They have an
(800) number but your only option is to leave a message and hope for a call back, or to
send an email and wait for a reply. |
|
Pairing
password printed on device |
No (it is
1234 so in an emergency you have a good chance
of guessing what it is!) |
|
Features |
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Battery life |
4 hrs talk/4
days standby claimed. This is a below average
life (as of Feb 06). |
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Low battery
indicator/signal |
Red light
flashes. No audible signal. |
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Battery type |
Lithium
polymer |
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Replaceable
battery? |
No |
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Battery
charging method/time |
A brick type
charger plugs into the mains and has a cord that
then plugs into the headset |
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Multi-voltage charger |
Yes |
|
Charger
weight/size |
2.1 oz
Typical sort
of size for brick chargers |
|
Other
charging methods |
The supplier
advises that the unit now comes with a car
charger as well as the mains charger. |
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How many
pairings can be stored |
The
unit will only store one pairing, and so if you
pair with a second device, it over-writes its
pairing information for the first device,
meaning when you go to use it with the first
device again, you have to re-pair it each time
you change cell phones. |
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Headset and
hands-free profiles? |
Yes, both |
|
Audio
profile for computers |
Yes -
but not tested |
|
Bluetooth
1.1 compatibility |
Yes |
|
Class 2 |
Yes |
|
Effective
range |
Adequate |
|
Warranty |
Neither the
box, manual, or website make clear the warranty
policy on the unit, although the battery inside it
is described as having a
6 month warranty. 8com advise that the
warranty is for one year. |
|
Free return |
15 day, no
restocking fee |
|
Noise
cancelling/DSP |
some claimed |
|
Sound
quality |
Clear and
acceptable |
|
Capabilities |
|
Turning on
and off |
Need to use
both hands (press function and 'volume -'
buttons simultaneously for 2 seconds); and if
you press for two long, it changes into a
different mode rather than simply turning
on/off. |
|
Auto connect |
Not
supported |
|
Voice tag
support |
Yes, easy to
use (simply press the function button in standby
mode and say the name after a very faint quiet beep
that you'd likely not hear in a noisy
environment) |
|
Last number
redial |
Yes (press
either volume key while in standby mode) |
|
Transfer
call to/from phone |
Transfer to
headset by pressing function key.
Transfer
from headset - may be possible in theory, but in
practice I can't get it to work. |
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Call
waiting/Three way calling |
Apparently
not supported |
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Call reject |
Yes (press
function key for two seconds) |
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Call
answer/end |
Yes (briefly
press function key to answer, press and hold to
end call) |
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Mute |
Yes
but difficult to do while unit is on the ear
(press both volume keys simultaneously) |
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Subjective |
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Attractive
design |
Average |
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Flashing
indicators on standby |
Yes, bright
blue flashing light all the time the unit is on.
Some might consider this objectionable. |
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Size |
Average to
small |
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Summary |
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This unit
has a reasonable feature set in a convenient small
package, and at a great price. |
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Using the BH-220
The first task proved to be
surprisingly challenging - placing the ear hook into its slot in
the headset. After pushing very hard, with the unit not
entering the hole it needed to be threaded through, I stopped
for fear of breaking it, but the supplier told me that this is a
deliberate feature - the friction fit stops the hook from
sliding out and the unit from subsequently falling off.
It was impossible to easily
tell which way the hook should go to make it left eared or right
eared, so I guessed and fortunately got it correct first time.
Clearer information was needed so that you too don't have to
guess how to carry out this difficult assembly operation.
After threading the ear hook
into its slot, the next task is to bend it so it more closely
fits the outline of your ear. This was easy to do.
The manual is not well
written and is in rather Chinese accented English. It also
has at least one mistake - it says to charge the phone when
switched off and that the phone will be charged when the red
light extinguishes. 8Com now advise that the phone should
be charged while powered on, and that the phone is charged when
the red light stays on but when the blue light extinguishes.
Turning the unit on was
fairly straightforward, although it required both hands plus
also looking carefully at the unit and remembering to release
the pressure on the two buttons after three blue flashes and
before any red flashes.
Turning the unit off was
never easy, and often I'd think I turned the unit off, only to
notice it still flashing away at me a minute or two later.
The challenge is to press the buttons for long enough as to
indicate a 'power off' command but not too long or else the
headset interprets it as some other type of command.
Connecting with phones
This is undoubtedly the
Achilles heel of this and many other Bluetooth headsets.
The BH-220 does not automatically connect to its paired cell
phone when the two devices, both switched on, come within range
of each other. This has to be manually done, by briefly
pressing the function key.
The problem with this is the
theoretical convenience factor of fully automatic Bluetooth
connections is lost when you have to remember to manually
connect the two devices each time they are together, and look at
the phone to check that the linking has been successful.
If you should briefly go out
of range and lose the active pairing, then you probably don't
even realize the connection has been broken, and next time you
try and answer an incoming call, you'll find you can't and by
the time you've figured out what is happening and resolved it,
your caller may have given up or been switched to voicemail, plus what is supposed to be a
simple, hassle free and distraction free event - answering a call by
simply pushing a button - instead becomes the opposite.
Using with a Motorola V600
It was easy to pair the two
devices.
Voicetag support worked, as
did the other commands.
The phone would ring rather
than the headset.
Using with a Nokia 3650
It was easy to pair the two
devices.
The headset rang rather than
the phone.
Using with a Sony Ericcson T610
It was easy to pair the two
devices.
The phone rang when a call
was coming in, and the headset also played a very faint tune
(Twilight Zone theme).
Summary
The good news - the BH-220
Bluetooth headset is lightweight, easy to put on and off your
ear, and comfortable to wear.
It has an average set of
features and below average battery life, with a good price, but
where is the sense in buying an inexpensive unit if it doesn't
work satisfactorily?
The lack of auto-connecting
to your cell phone is its biggest weakness. and the necessarily
fiddly small controls on the headset is another limitation -
both these limitations are shared with other similar headsets
however.
The unit can be purchased
directly from the US distributor,
8Com.
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Originally published
22 Oct 2004, 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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