Jabra Polishes Its Halo

Jabra's Halo Bluetooth wireless headset can hand calls and music - and looks like a regular set of headphones, rather than a robotic cricket living in your year.

Jabra Halo

Headset maker Jabra has introduced its new Halo Bluetooth headset—and realizing that most stereo Bluetooth solutions are about as elegant and hassle free as a 100-foot extension cord tied in knots, the company has borrowed the Halo’s design from the music side of the fence. Instead of being designed as an in-ear or over-the-hear device, the Halo uses a two-year, over-the-head design from traditional headphones…and the Halo collapses and folds into a carrying case for convenient storage and travel when not in use.

The Halo headset weighs just three ounces and features A2DP for music streaming and claims to offer up to 8 hours of talk or music time on a single battery charge, along with a standby time of 13 days. The Halo juices up via a microUSB charger, and features autopairing with mobile device and Multiuse for connecting to two Bluetooth devices simultaneously—say a mobile phone and a notebook computer. The Halo headset also Zerine Power Bass to pump more thump into your head, a battery charge indicator, a touch volume control, and noise reduction technology with two microphones for clear voice communications. And if you don’t have Bluetooth on everything you want to hear over headphones, the Halo can also be used wired.

The Halo is available now exclusively at Best Buy in the United States for $129.99; it should land in Canada in October. Jabra says the Halo will work with Bluetooth-eqipped MP3 players, notebooks, and mobile phones like BlackBerry devices, although iPhone and iPod touch owners will need iPhone 3.0 software.