Aliph Jawbone Prime review

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Verdict:

Review Date: 30 Jun 2009

Price when reviewed: £90

Supplier: http://us.jawbone.com

Reviewed By: Alan Stonebridge

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

The latest Jawbone comes in subdued hues and bold, colourful varieties, and its shape is all about subtle curves.

The outer edge is contoured to your face, and the rest is glossy and smooth to eliminate harsh, boxy lines. Its designers have gone to a lot of effort to ensure that you'll want to wear the headset.

This fashion-conscious appearance masks the location of two buttons. The talk button lies under a subtle line on the ovoid-patterned outer face, and there's another at the back, where it curves in towards your ear. Answer and reject functions are sensibly assigned to separate buttons, rather than a single or double tap of the same one.

Various combinations of tap and holding the back button will redial the last called number, cycle volume and toggle the Noise Assassin feature. In standby mode, holding it triggers voice dialing mode, but aside from a beep to confirm it, there were no further prompts and no activity on our iPhone, which was disappointing after the experience of other voice-driven headsets.

We had no problems whatsoever with being heard in an office or on a bustling street. The ear loop, six sizes of earbud and light weight make it comfortable, too. However, we're puzzled by the power connector, which plugs into the mains or USB port on your Mac, but uses a flat, magnetic connector at the headset end. We'd rather have a mini or micro USB port that works with cheap cables, rather than having to carry the cable or buy another charger at £19.99 to leave in the office.

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