Becoming Unwired Actually Works...for a while

Anyone who has ever owned a cellphone knows that having an extended conversation on one, especially if you're walking around, is awkward. If you find yourself doing this regularly, you might end up looking like one of those characters on the old British TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Whether it was kinesthetists or RF engineers who got the idea first, the Bluetooth standard was developed by a working group led by Intel, Toshiba, IBM, Nokia and Ericsson in 1998. The purpose of the concept was to come up with a wireless successor for the IrDA (InfaRed) connectivity system of linking devices. The Bluetooth specification was so named because they chose to use the runic symbols for "H" and "B", honoring Harold Bluetooth, the king who united Denmark and Norway in the 10th Century.

But I digress.

With more and more states (including my own state of NY) adopting laws requiring the use of "hands free" cellphone connections when operating a motor vehicle, and being fed up with misplacing all of my wired earpiece, I decided to investigate getting a Bluetooth device for my Blackberry 7100c (Cingular).

Although the Blackberry device adveres to the Bluetooth 1.1 specification, Research in Motion specifically lists Bluetooth earpieces which it has tested successfully with the 7100c. One of these is the Plantronics 320, which I purchased (after pricing through Shopping.com) for $35 plus tax.

Although neither the smallest unit nor the lightest, the 320 is small (about 1.5 inches) and light (.7 oz). The curved earpiece fits around your ear, and is reversable for wearing on either the left or the right side.

The 320 is a "one button" device. The volume control and on-off function is contained in a single swich on the outside of the device, which is easily accessable.

Setup was a breeze. After charging the earpiece with the included charger for 20 minutes, I enabled Bluetooth on my Blackberry and turned on the 320. The Blackberry found it immediately, and asked me if I wanted to connect.

The range of the 320 is listed at 10 meters (about 30 feet) under optimal conditions. In my experience, its range is somewhat shorter, depending on what is between you and the source cellphone.

The 320 is eminently usable out of doors, unlike some of its competition. The speaker in the earpiece can be easily heard even when there's a lot of ambient noise. The only exception to this is when you're in a windy area, but that is generally true of all earpieces, wireless or not.

Plantronics claims up to 8 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge. I don't know anyone except my teenage stepdaughters who could possibly talk for that long (I'm kidding, of course), but my expeinces with the 320 so far suggest that the battery life is excellent.

If you're in the market for a hands-free headpiece for a Blackberry enabled device, I'd take a hard look at this one. It's neither the newest nor the most stylish, but it's not unstylish, either, and it does everything that you'd want such a device to do!

Updated January 2007: the silicon loop which goes over your ear and holds the earpiece on disintegrated after a year's use. While the electronics work fine, I've had to replace it. This changes my opinion significantly.