Aliph’s just gone and improved the second-generation Jawbone Bluetooth headset in both the sound quality and the looks department, which means there’s even more reason to buy one now.
There are four fashion colours—red, yellow, orange and purple—for people who would rather accessorize than try to hide the fact that they’re using a Bluetooth headset. (Their names, “Frankly Scarlet”, “Yello!”, “Drop Me a Lime” and “LILAC You Mean It” are at the very least, clever.) Of course, there’s also the obligatory black, brown and platinum colours for people who take themselves seriously.
On the other hand, there’s the voice improvements. Their NoiseAssassin’s Voice Activity Sensor is still there, providing great noise elimination as long as it’s touching your face. But in the case that the little white nub slides off your cheek, their new Acoustic Voice Activity Detector supposedly provides as good a noise cancellation algorithm as other headsets on the market. Overall, the Jawbone Prime gives better noise suppression than the Jawbone 2 by about 3x (give or take, depending on the situation). Also, there’s redesigned wind noise suppression.
Rounding out the features, there’s Bluetooth 1.1, 1.2, 2.0 and 2.1 + EDR support, 10 meter range, 4.5 hours talk time, 8 days standby time, two simultaneous device connections and a price of $US130. We’ll let you know how it performs once we test it. [Jawbone]