Nokia BH-218 Review

Introduction and Design:

This fall was a busy season for Nokia – the company released its latest flagship, the Nokia N8, and took over Symbian while trying to accelerate its development to match the increasing competition in the smartphone field. With all these news around the Finns, you might have missed their latest series of Bluetooth headsets. The lineup of five new earpieces carries some distinct Nokia accents and packs some innovative ideas. What we're looking at in this review is the Nokia BH-218 handsfree, which is part of this very same lineup.

In the package you will find the headset itself, a 2 mm AC-3 Nokia charger (sorry, no microUSB) and both small and large-sized earplugs.

The Nokia BH-218 uses the unconventional clip-on design with a separate clip and a single earbud attached to it with a cable. The headset clips to your clothes and holds the earpiece until you need to make a call. Even though the design is somewhat unusual, we found it to be convenient in most cases. The headset powers on or off automatically when the earpiece is moved from the clip, which boosts the battery life significantly. Except for the design, the BH-218 has almost the same features as the BH-217, the previous model in the lineup.


The clip is minimalistic and slim with only the answer/end key and the company's logo. We didn't have any issues with the clip falling off. But the most controversial element of the headset seems to be the cable connecting the ear bud as it dangles from the clip and we found ourselves trying to hide or better fit it every time after a call.


That being said, we have to mention that the microphone is placed on a small plastic part on the cable, which holds the mute switch as well. The ear bud fits nicely into your ear with comfort level as of regular ear buds. You might find yourself looking for a volume rocker in the beginning, but you will soon realize that the volume is automatically adjusted.

Performance:

Powering the device on is as simple as taking the ear bud out of the clip. The Nokia BH-218 starts to flash in blue to indicate it has entered pairing mode and we had no trouble hooking the device up to an iPhone or a Nokia phone. Multipoint is on board and this means that the headset can be paired with two phones at the same time. In addition, voice guidance can also be of some use, notifying you about the status of the device. The Nokia BH-218 supports Bluetooth 2.1, as well as the Headset (HSP) and Handsfree (HFP) profiles.

With no volume controls, it is essential that the automatic adjustments to the sound level happen quickly and accurately. To test the robustness of the volume adjustments and the noise reduction, we took the BH-218 to the busiest streets in town. We found the device to perform very good in noisy environments, our callers were able to hear us clearly despite all the car horns and honking of rush hour. On our side, the volume controls were also good, volume adjustment was reasonably quick as we went from busier to quiet streets.

One thing we would have wished to hear is sound that is a notch louder, but overall we are happy with the Nokia BH-218. On incoming calls, people sounded close to natural, we could tell apart familiar voices. Our callers reported hearing us loud, but not so clear as voices were a bit subdued.


Talk time stands at the very good 8 hours, while you will need some 2 hours to fully charge the headset. Battery life was on par with Nokia's claims of 8 hours of talk time and more than enough for the needs of most. Even though we used the handset in around 20-degree F weather, we did not notice a decrease in battery life. This might be due to the fact that the clip would usually be covered with a layer of clothes in winter and thus protected from the negative impact that low temperatures have on batteries.

Conclusion:

The Nokia BH-218 is on the cheaper side of Nokia's series of headsets at nearly $50. As we saw, it goes with some unconventional design decisions, but nevertheless looks discreet when you manage to deal with the dangling cable issue. But the most important feature for a headset is good call quality and comfort fit, and this one has them both. The BH-218 adds a great battery life and if you want to try a somewhat different headset, you might just find this the right pick.