Aliph Jawbone Review

Functionality:

Connection is done in the standard way by setting the Jawbone in a pairing regime. To do that you press the noise shield button for approximately 3 seconds, while the phone is switched off, until the indicators starts blinking in white and red. The code, which the telephone asks for, is 0000.

Although the management buttons are actually only two, you can activate the different functions of the device, by pressing various key combinations. You can answer/interrupt/refuse calls, to dial by voice commands, to transfer the conversation from the headset to the phone and back. Now you are probably asking yourself where and how you can increase/decrease the volume of the sound in the receiver.

Jawbone is constructed in such a way, that it sets the volume of the sound according to the noise level around you. Yet, if it occurs to you that the noise level is weak, then you can increase the volume by pressing the Noise shield button during conversation.

You can restore the manufacture’s settings of the headset at any time by pressing the reset button by the metal end of the earloop.


Performance:

In a normal environment, without any noise around you, the volume of the sound of Jawbone is very high, it sounds a little bit synthetic, without low frequencies. The outgoing sound is loud also, relatively realistic, since the sound does not have low frequencies.

We suppose you are not that interested in the headset's performance in a normal environment, but in a noisy one. Therefore, let us go to the Noise shield tests.

As we mentioned earlier, Noise shield is a technology for eliminating background noise so that the interlocutor hears only your voice. Of course, we did not leave things like this and decided to check whether in reality the noise shield has such a good effect, as the manufacturer states. A night club or a disco are the places, where often conversations are held, therefore we decided to test Jawbone with loud music and to check its performance.

When testing we switched on and off alternatingly the Noise shield so that we can better feel the difference and we found out that there is an actual variation in the noise quantity.

Jawbone really performs great and in this respect surpassed our expectations, as during the test the music was slightly audible on the other side of the phone, much more as a background rather than as unbearable noise. The effect of the noise shield is so striking that at moments the person, you are talking with, is left with the impression that you reduced the volume of the music. When a person is at a noisy place, one unconsciously starts to speak louder than normal and in this moment the voice vibrations transferred to you jaw are best felt/caught by the censor. Therefore, it is important, when you are at a noisy place, to speak loud, so that the effect of the noise shield technology is maximal. Another very important condition is that the censor is stuck to your cheek as much as possible, otherwise, its sensitivity is reduced and thus the effect of noise suppression.

We shall observe that the noise shield technology has been designed to handle external noises and as such it performs excellently, but its performance is not as good when having conversation in the open and with a wind blowing. The wind has a direct influence on the headset and creates noises when the airflow whirls into the mic, in this case the Noise shield technology is powerless.

Going on with our tests, we had to check, what is the optimal distance from the phone to the headset, at which the quality of the connection is unchanged and conversations can be carried out without a problem. The Jawbone’s achievement is 80 Meters (262.4 feet), which is a wonderful performance and we can hardly compare it with any other device. The only headset getting close to this result is H670 from Motorola. When a distance at which the phone loses signal is reached, a sound is heard to indicate this. When you go back to an area with coverage, you here a signal as well. This is a great advantage, if you have the habit of leaving the phone and going around with the headset. In this way you will know when you are located in an coverage area and when not.

Aliph says that with Jawbone you can talk for up to 6 hours with the noise shield, turned on, and when in standby the battery can last up to 120 hours. In order to check the official data we tested the device during a constant conversation, during which the sound was set at a maximum and the noise shield was switched on. In this environment the headset lasted for 5 hours and 10 minutes, this achievement being average as a whole, is relatively good in comparison to devices, using DSP.