Jabra Easygo: Solid, Easy-Access Controls on a Bluetooth Headset

“Black and boring” is one way to describe the Jabra Easygo Bluetooth headset. But its $40 (as of March 1, 2011) price tag is attractive considering what you get: average to above-average call quality, extra earbud covers, and a choice of wearing style (you can go with or without the earhook).

I’d go for the hookless approach any day; having a loopy contraption hugging my ear tends to distract me. Still, donning the Easygo–with the earhook attachment or without it–felt lightweight and relatively unobtrusive. The smaller earbud cover felt a tad too large for my small ears, but when another tester with larger ear canals tried the unit on for size, it fit just fine.

The Easygo’s main control button, the Call button (for answering, ending, and rejecting calls, and so on), is easy to locate and provides excellent feedback when pressed. It occupies the whole upper half of the headset, so the pad of my finger tapped away happily. However, early on during testing, the Call button’s generous size proved to be a double-edged sword: I started brushing this button with my finger accidentally, when I needed to reposition the headset, for instance. And this resulted in my abruptly hanging up on folks or accidentally redialing my last outgoing call, when I inadvertently did a double-tap maneuver. (Oops.) I constantly had to remind myself to grip the side of the unit to avoid ticking people off.

I always appreciate a separate power on/off switch, but in the case of the Easygo the power switch is not particularly convenient: I had to take the unit off my ear and then move the earhook out of the way to access the teeny slider. The narrow volume-up and volume-down buttons are housed at the side of the unit, and they delivered solid feedback when I tapped them with my thumb.

At the receiving end of the Easygo, other parties often reported an echo or a hollow sound to conversations. Even so, they could understand what I was talking about; people said that my voice sounded natural and that my usual intonation was maintained. However, two testers picked up on background noise (music); among headsets I’ve tested lately, the Easygo proved to be the only model that did not nix background sounds successfully. On my end, voices sounded reasonably solid, but I had to up the volume as a matter of course.

Aside from voice prompts indicating that the headset is connected to my phone or running low on battery power, the Easygo lacks additional features such as callers’ name announcements or talk-time-remaining alerts. If you’re the type of Bluetooth headset user who isn’t concerned about out-there style and is looking for a minimum-frills product at an affordable price, the Jabra Easygo is a great contender.