Plantronics Voyager 520 - A Stylish Headset For Your Cell Phone

Author's Rating:

Pros: Stylish, Comfortable, High Quality

Cons: None!

The Bottom Line: 
If you're looking for a great headset for your cell phone, you should seriously consider the Plantronics Voyager 520!!

Author's Review
Not only is it the law where I live that I use a hands-free device to talk on my phone while driving, it is also common sense. I drive a manual car, which means that between steering and shifting, I really don't have a third hand to hold my cellphone. I recently upgraded to a new cellphone, and at the time could choose a hands-free device for a discount, so I chose to go with the Plantronics Voyager 520 Headset. At the time I chose it merely based on looks (there were only a select few that I could choose from), and I'm glad I wound up with it because performance has been top-notch.

The First Charge
Like everything that runs on a battery, the first charge is the most important - don't skimp! I know that you're probably excited to use your Plantronics Voyager 520 as soon as you get it, but the simple fact is that you have survived until now without it, so you can probably make do without it for an additional 2-3 hours. Overcharging will kill battery life, too, but the initial charge is supposed to be 2 hours - I left mine connected for 3 and have not had any problems with battery life.

Connecting To A Phone For The First Time
Connecting for the first time is almost as simple as turning it on (almost... it's that easy the second time). You have to "pair" your headset with your cellphone (so that they can find each-other in the future and know that you are trying to connect and not accidentally connecting to a random phone). You do this by simply turning your headset on - it will be in pair mode while it is on before you pair it with anything - turning your bluetooth on on your phone, and searching for a device. Then they find each other and it's love at first sight - ok maybe not that drastic but they're connected... get it? You might be asked to put in a password - if you are just enter 0000 and you are all set!

Connecting To Two Phones?
What if you have two phones and want to connect them both to headsets? Do you have to drive around in your car with two different headsets - one on each ear - for each phone? No way! One of the great features of the Voyager 520 is that you can connect two phones to it at once. You may be asking who would even have two phones - do you have a work cell and a personal cell? I do - so watch what you say about people like that...

Can You Pair It With A Computer?
If your computer has bluetooth, you can also connect your Voyager 520 to your computer. If you are wondering why you would ever need to do that, you're probably not someone who's using Skype or trash-talking while playing online games, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. The pairing process is exactly the same as for phones.

Subsequent Charging
Charging is just like any device at this point - just plug it in and walk away. It takes a couple of hours to charge, but I find that I just plug it in when I go to bed and take it off in the morning - this is terrible to do for battery life but it's really easy, which is obviously why I do it...

How Do You Know When To Charge It?
There is no display screen or anything unnecessarily fancy like that on the Voyager 520, so you may be asking how you know when it's time to charge without that fancy battery graphic that you have learned is so unreliable on your cellphone. When you turn your Voyager 520 on, a red light will flash. At first I thought it was random and I wasn't really paying attention to it. Then I learned that it actually means something... If it flashes three times, that means that you basically have a full charge. If it flashes two times, that means you are about halfway done. And when it flashes one time, that means it's time to charge soon. Pretty simple (and easy to miss if you don't know why it's flashing), but very useful.

Battery Life
I honestly have no idea how long the battery life claims to be, but I can tell you that I use it in my car when I drive to and from work every day, which is anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour. I don't talk that much on it and I charge it roughly every-other week. This is more than adequate for me.

THE Button
There is only one button on the Voyager 520, which I didn't think would cut the mustard when I first got it, but have since found out that it works. Here is what the button does:

On/Off
Hold it down and wait for either a crescendo in your ear (turning on), or a decrescendo in your ear (turning off).

Volume Control
If you push the button towards the front, it will increase the volume (and you can hear a beep get louder in your ear), and if you push the button towards the back, it will decrease the volume. I tend to leave the volume in the middle and just change the headset volume on my cellphone (I've found there's a lot more range that way), but I will occasionally change the volume using the button.

Connect To Incoming Call
Just click the button in - very easy! There also isn't a lot more to say here...

Call With Voice Command
Hold the button in for a few seconds, and it connects to the voice command on your phone (or it does on mine...). That way, all I have to do is say "Call ya-di-ya mobile" and ya-di-ya's mobile is calling right away.

How's The Quality?
This, of course, is the most important question to ask. All the other fancy features can be great - if it can make your morning coffee on your drive to work but doesn't work for calling, then it's worthless. The quality on both ends, as far as I'm concerned, is great. What I mean by that is that I do not have any problems hearing anyone, and I have not had anyone say that they can't hear me very well (something which I complain to people about all the time).

How Comfortable Is The Voyager 520?
And this is the second most important question, because if the quality is great but it feels like someone is stabbing you in the ear when you use it, then you are going to regret your purchase pretty quickly. I have found the Voyager 520 to be very comfortable. It has an inner-ear piece that rests inside your ear so that you can hear better, and the whole headset is held up on your ear by a comfortable piece of plastic that loops over it. You can wear it on either your left or right ear, so if you have someone in your passenger seat and want to pretend like you don't want to talk to them, leave it on your right ear!

Overall
Overall I am very happy with my Plantronics Voyager 520. I, unfortunately, purchased it without doing a lot of homework on it, and I got really lucky! It's comfortable, stylish, and very high quality!