Nokia BH-701 Review

Design:

On the front of the device stands out a multifunctional button for control and on the side you can find a scroll key for volume control. A LED indicator is placed on the upper side part, which lights in three different colours – green, red and blue, depending on the status of the headset.

The control buttons are designed very nicely and it is very comfortable and easy to press them without too much force. The volume control is achieved by the scroll key, which is used in many other models of Nokia. However, unlike them it has short motion and almost no tactile feedback. And it cannot be pressed in to mute the microphone. Reaching the min/max volume is indicated by a sound in the headset. When you press the multifunctional button it leads to simultaneous pushing of the whole device, further inside the ear and in this way you adjust it involuntarily.

There is a semi-transparent soft surface around the ear-piece and it is necessary because it goes inside your ear to set firmly. We have a similar situation with other headsets of Nokia (BH-800/801), but unlike them, the ear-loop is not optional here and it is always attached to the headset and you have to put it around your ear.

Functionality:

With BH-701, as well as with BH-301 there is no pairing mode, but the device is ready for this as soon as it is activated. If the device was connected with other phone before that, it can be put into pairing mode by holding down the multifunctional button until a blue light indicator starts flashing. Besides this, everything is done by the usual way and you are again prompted for the code 0000.

The headset has standard controls - answer / end calls, voice dialing, transferring calls to the phone and back, and by combination of buttons you can clear all the pairing settings or reset the headset. Our attention was attracted by the fact that the functionality is almost identical with BH-301 excluding the slight difference in the controls.

Battery

Range

Performance:

The volume of the sound in the headset is low and in a little bit noisier environment, you won’t be able to hear very well. The quality is good and there is no echo, the voices sound realistically with no distortion.
The volume of the sound on the other side of the phone line is good and it is above the normal level, but the voices are not very realistic and they are a little bit high-pitched.

We also tried the performance of the headset in noisier environment, with loud music or with wind, which are situations most of you will experience.

While trying to make a call surrounded by a loud music, you have to speak up in order to make a understandable conversation with the other side.
If there is a slight wind there is no problem to make understandable conversation, but when the wind is getting stronger the headset can’t manage with the noises and the other side can’t understand you.

According to the product specifications the device lasts up to 6 hours of talk time and up to 160 hours of standby time. We have tested these specifications and after the test, the device dies after 5 hours and 50 minutes, which is very close to the official specifications. This is a better achievement than models like BH-700, BH-801 and BH -301 which achieved almost the same result in this test.

The test for the signal range of the device where the quality of the connection stays unchanged, BH -701 surprised us with its achievement of 31.1 meters (105.3 feet), which is one of the best results of all Nokia devices we have ever tested. One of the models that has almost the same result is BH -600.