Product: Jawbone ERA Bluetooth Headset
Supplier: Jawbone
MSRP: $129     Find Lowest Price @ PriceGrabber
Author: Barry
Date: April 5, 2011

If you’re anything like me, the last thing you want to be doing on your smart phone is actually holding it to your head.  We’ve come a long way since the days of the my clamshell flip phone, yet we’ve quite possibly taken a step backwards in regards to comfort in making a basic call with just our phones.  Couple in the handsfree laws in most states these days, and a bluetooth headset is an outright necessity.

I’ve become a big fan of the Jawbone series, and the new ERA is no exception. As an owner of their previous ICON series, I was curious to see what improvements the last year had brought.

Physical

Compared to my previous ICON, the ERA is thinner, but longer, almost a “typical” length for a Bluetooth headset.  To me, this was a welcome change, as I almost felt the old ICON’s size felt toy-like and caused it to bow out from my ear.  The ERA comes with the usual assortment of rubber ear attachments and loops to make it fit just about anyone.  I opted for the 2^nd largest insert, which allowed it to fit without a loop.  For those among you who, like me, scramble to put in their earpiece when they get a call, is a godsend.  The ERA stayed in my ear, even when I shook my head, leaned upside down, or otherwise moved around.

Button placement will be familiar to previous Jawbone owners – there are but two physical controls on the device; a power toggle, which requires some substantial effort to slide (probably good for anyone who’s ever accidentally turned on their earpiece and pocket dialed), and a single push button for getting the device status and sending commands (voice dial, hang up, etc).  A minor gripe about the power button – it would be nice to be able to turn on the device when it’s already attached to your head, but its placement makes this relatively difficult without taking it back out.  Still, only a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things.

Features

The most noticeable feature of the ERA is the larger speaker – the goal being to make streaming, VoIP, and pretty much everything else sound more like a uni-headphone instead of a headset.  Even from the first powerup (both my Jawbones have the same voice), you can tell the improvement in sound quality.  Playing music, I could tell the increased fidelity (even some bass – try that in any other Bluetooth earpiece these days).  The improvement was less pronounced in regular phone calls, but that’s more due to the source than anything.

The other main change of the ERA is the addition of motion controls – the device will accept various commands, such as tapping twice to hang up or answer.  It became my preferred method of answering calls, as tap-tapping (or in my case, lightly smacking the side of my head twice) was much easier to perform while driving than gingerly reaching up to find the answer call button.  There is also a function to shake the ERA four times to enter pairing mode, though I found this less useful once I’d paired my unit with my phone and laptop.  Bear in mind the ERA supports up to 8 paired devices, so those of you with more toys may be using this more often.

One of the smartest features going for the Jawbone is the battery meter.  Your phone has one, why shouldn’t it be able to tell you your headset’s battery life?  This feature worked right out of the box on my iPhone 4 without any additional apps, though it will work with a Blackberry with an additional app.  The lack of Android app support seemed to be a bit of a minus as it’s a major platform in its own right, but this shouldn’t discourage Android-based phone owners (unless reading battery life is a deal breaker for you).

Performance

I find myself on a lot of conference calls on a daily basis, so work was the best test bed for the ERA.  Pairing the phone was a snap – if you haven’t done this a few times before with a Bluetooth peripheral, the manual gives pretty decent (if generic) instructions.  Walking around my office, I found myself able to pace fairly far from the phone without being disconnected; something the iPhone is notorious for (poor Bluetooth radio distance).

Talking sounded great on both normal phone calls, FaceTime (A2DP support makes it possible to use your Bluetooth peripherals in just about any app as an audio source, something handy for people who hate Skype/FaceTime on speakerphone).  Voice quality was decidedly better on VoIP apps, about the same on my phone calls.   Then again this is likely more a product of the source (the cellular phone network) than anything.

Speaking of talking, one of the features for which the Jawbone series is well known is its NoiseAssassin technology.  This feature is designed to cancel out background noise and adjust settings such that your caller can hear you with a minimum of background noise and you can hear them (by adjusting earpiece volume to compensate for your environment).  I tested this by calling someone in three different environments: my office, a supermarket, and a busy street sidewalk. In both the office and supermarket environments, call clarity went exceedingly well (minus the people who are fairly sure you’re talking to yourself, due to the ERA’s small size!).

The street was another matter, however; callers could hear me with some exceptions (city bus).  They did routinely comment “wow, where are you? Can you hear me ok?”, so this would indicate that blocking out some background noise is perhaps more difficult than others.  The important part was I could still be understood, and I think this is what was most important.  Unfortunately, hearing the caller was another matter, and I routinely had to max out the ERA’s volume to hear callers on the street.  Whether or not this is an issue with the pairing or simply not deafening the user by having a volume limit, remains to be seen.

Battery life is rated at 5.5 hours for talk, 10 days on standby.  I typically turn off my unit when not in use, but I definitely chew through active talk hours.  This is where the ERA fell a bit short, as the helpful voice announced “30 minutes remaining” about 4 hours of calls in.  Not bad for such a small headset, but slightly short of 5.5 hours.  Your mileage may vary, of course – I’m certain continuous active use would be slightly better for battery life than constant powering up/down and the mixed use such a device routinely sees in the field.

When your device is out of juice, the charger (easily portable, thanks to folding prongs) will get it back up and charged within an hour.  It’s tricky to plug in the ERA to the micro-USB cable (it has to be oriented just right), but this is again just another minor nit for those of us that like to keep our chargers under our desks.

Keeping It Current

One of the things I loved about my ICON (and now with the ERA) was that it had the ability to be updated by the Jawbone MyTALK website.  This not only allows for the manufacturer to fix bugs with various phones by updating firmware, it also allows the user to customize their phone by installing apps, command voices, and other items.  In the case of my ICON, it allowed me to upgrade it to A2DP support, so it’s not just minor updates we’re talking about here.  Even the ERA has had a firmware update since I received it, so it’s clear Jawbone is hard at work improving their devices.  Some of the apps are more useful than others but the idea of making your Jawbone your own custom piece of technology is a nice touch. Plus, the “Rogue” voice sounds enough like the voice of the Spy in the Team Fortress 2 game to make it amusing for the gamer in all of us…

One unfortunate disappointment was the caller announce app feature.  After using other Bluetooth devices with the ability to download a phone’s phonebook and announce callers by name, it felt somewhat archaic to be forced to manually enter contact names in the MyTalk portal (and be limited to 20 at that).  It’s not the end the world, but it’s hard to believe on a device that can store multiple applications and voices that it’s not possible to sync names to the device.

Summary

If you’re looking for a headset with all around excellent audio quality, support for numerous voice applications while being paired with multiple devices, and useful features, you can’t go wrong with the Jawbone ERA.  The price tag is a bit on the higher end at $129, but it’s not unusual for the market, and the regular firmware/feature updates will ensure that you’ll be using your ERA long after you would have relegated a cheaper Bluetooth headset to the desk drawer.

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Tags: Bluetooth, era, headset, Jawbone