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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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.