Sunday, September 2, 2018

Productivity Hack - Bluetooth Hands-free Headsets

One of the necessary evils of my job is - I need to still talk and present to a lot of people!

On an ordinary day, I get calls on WhatsApp, Skype for Business, WebEx, Zoom, Skype, Hangout old-fashioned phone calls (yeah they still exist!) etc. Not only do I have casual conversations (personal and business) but also I need to do a lot of "virtual" presentations in which the people on the other side sometimes are in another continent and timezone. The other pain of having so many channels for communication is that - I need to keep switching between my mobile phone and my laptop and it's stressful and messy.

A year ago, tired of all this mess, I decided to give Bluetooth headsets one more try! This is even after having a bad experience of breaking or losing at least 5 Bluetooth headsets before. Anyway, this time I researched long and hard and zeroed in on the Jabra Evolve 65

The Jabra Evolve 65 by no means is the best or the highest end Bluetooth headset that you can get. But within my budget and after researching my needs, I felt this was the right fit. So what exactly was I looking for in my headset?

  1. Connect to a phone and laptop at the same time
  2. Mute and control volumes off the headset
  3. Talk with a lot of background noise so that the listener on the other end can still clearly hear me (boom mic with a capability to cancel other noises)
  4. Listen to music when I am working so that background chatter doesn't affect me (stereo headset not mono)

It's been more than 10 months I have been using it day-in and day-out continuously and I am very impressed by it. Not only has it taken away the pain of communicating through so many apps, on 2 devices, but it also gave me the wireless freedom and the ability to roam around while talking or presenting. The added benefit is - I can listen to music to focus on my work (yeah we have an "open" office - which means there is a constant background chatter that I need to tune out if I have to get serious work done!). And the mic can cancel background noises so well that I am able to even take calls in crowded places like the MRT

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