Plantronics Voyager 855 stereo Bluetooth headset

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Review

If you’re looking for good stereo audio quality without the wires, then the Plantronics Voyager 855 stereo Bluetooth headset could be for you. While many mobile phones can play music, most come either with a mono hands-free headset or stereo headphones with pretty poor sound quality -- and often have proprietary connectors that prevent you from plugging in a better pair.

The Plantronics Voyager 855 may to be the ideal solution to this problem. It’s a Bluetooth stereo headset with an extra plug-in earbud, so you can keep one ear free for hands-free calls and switch to stereo when you’re listening to music.

The Voyager 855 is a neat design. Inside the box are the small main headset, the second earbud and two ear clips. The clips are detachable, so if you want to use the headset just to make calls, you can detach the second earbud and plug in a simple ear clip to turn the Voyager into a standard Bluetooth headset.

The Voyager’s earbuds are in-ear ‘canal phones’ that block out a significant amount of background noise. Like all canal phones, , it can feel strange pushing the rubber cap into your ear, but the headset comes with two different plug designs and three sizes to make it easier to get the right fit.

Pairing the headset with a Bluetooth phone is simply a matter of holding down the call answer button for a few seconds to put the headset in discoverable mode. Search for the headset in your phone’s Bluetooth menu and the two are paired in seconds.

The headset has a small rocker switch for volume and another to mute calls. To answer calls, you can extend the small boom microphone or press the answer button. Call quality was acceptable at both ends of the line, but significantly clearer with the boom microphone extended. 

The headset also made a good job of playing back music when connected to a Sony Ericsson W880i Walkman phone. The sound was very clear, with well-defined treble and mid-range and some bass -- and far superior to most Bluetooth headsets and bundled wired mobile headphones.

The sound-blocking properties of the Voyager 855s also means that you can hear your music clearly in noisy environments, and as the headphones don’t leak much sound, you won’t annoy people around you. The headset has a claimed talk time of seven hours and audio listening time of six hours, so you shouldn’t have to plug in the supplied mains charger too often.

At £56, the Voyager 855 is fairly expensive for a Bluetooth headset, but its impressive audio quality makes it a fine way to enjoy music and make hands-free calls on the move.

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