I’ve blasted Bluetooth headsets since they came out. Putting another lame wireless technology on the end of a lame wireless technology (face it, cell phones are NOT great at quality audio) seems like a formula for crap. I’ve had two different BT headsets and they were both laggy and distorted using both Sony and Motorola phones. It will take a miracle to get me back to using one.

Could this be it? Motorola H5 MINIBLUE. This headset has a flanged ear-canel plug (similar to my Shure e4c in-ear monitors) so it sticks IN your ear, not around/on/over/nearly-falling-off of it. And the copy says that it gets your voice from inside your ear canal (serious spook-grade navy-seal type tech here, if it is true).

If that is true, this could actually be a noise-free headset that only picks up your voice and no wind noise, background noise, etc. That would be awesome for those of us in convertibles with absolutely no desire to give a crap about what the person on the phone said while the wind blows through our hair doing 90 on the freeway.

Motorola expects the MINIBLUE to be available in the first half of 2006, which means just in time for the holidays. If it works as advertised, expect to have zero luck finding it in stock anywhere until 2007 unless you want to pay over retail. That is, unless it falls short due to the lame Bluetooth protocol it uses for audio.

I wonder how it will work with Skype in my office…

EDIT: Looks like MSRP is $169 based on some early site prices.