Light and unnoticeable, HBH-DS970 is always with you due to the around-the-neck wearing style. It looks rather strange and denies the idea of “wirelessness”, but on the other hand your headphones are not so clumsy. The separated Play/Pause, Volume +/-, Skip Fwd/Back control buttons are cosily located in the headset's body and make it easy to adjust the volume, choose tracks and play/pause the music. They are easy to reach and find by feeling. Thanks to their thought-out disposition, you will not confuse them until you start switching with another hand – the form of buttons on the one side of stick resembles to some extent the form of the buttons on the other side. You can answer or reject calls – the Call/Answer/End button is located on the headphone wire (on the left), and the microphone is on the right. Moreover, the 11 digit LCD screen is at your disposal, showing the status of active Bluetooth connection, volume level and battery life. Some programs support song information display. Forgot the title of the song that just began? Well, no problem – just glance at the single-line inverting screen. Incidentally, you will see the caller's name in case someone wants to have a chat with you while you're enjoying your music. But we'll talk of that later...

Design

To be honest, there exist some inconvenience about the HBH-DS970: there is no clothes clip, so it can annoy you in case you feel like dancing. In other words, this headset is not for fitness. Maybe it will help you a little if you make the strip shorter – the special design allows adjustment of the distance to the headphones.

The HBH-DS970 is 27 grams in the whole – very lightweight, so it won't bother you. It has tiny earpieces in the form of buds, easy to wear under a cap, in case it is too cold outdoors. The form provides noise reduction, that's why they are loud at max volume. Making a call, you hear your friend better than ever, and so does he. You won't hear sounds around you (so you can hide from noisy neighbors), but for some people it may cause inconvenience, they are afraid to miss something. If so, the earpieces are very convenient for one-eared listening, in a public place you can leave just one (especially if you need to be present in two places at once). The truth is, not all people like buds, experiencing strange feelings. As for me, sometimes I feel like plunging deep into the see with inner pressure increasing. On the contrary, some of my friends cannot imagine themselves with a different type of earpieces. They admire the absence of discomfort after the long-time wearing. Moreover, for your convenience the sales package includes three sets of ear plugs – S, M and L. You can select the right size for you.

Advantages

Another good point, very important one, is that the headset doesn't create unnecessary merry illumination. In contrast to many others headphones, it has no red/green/blue light flashing, so you don't feel like at an aliens party. And, walking down the dark street, you don't attract attention by the light show on your head.

Disadvantages

Unfortunately, you can't remove earphones and use other ones due to absence of 3.5 mm audio jack, but there is every likelihood that you won't need to do it. The quality of the stereo sound is really good, especially taking into account the size of the device. The sound is profound, maybe sometimes too loud, but, again, you can adjust it as you wish. The volume is also easy to adjust with a shortcut button. We can confirm that the HBH-DS970 stereo is the best for such kind of headphones.

Calls

Now let's return to calls. The HBH-DS970 has a multipoint function – it can be paired with several wireless devices simultaneously – PDA, laptop, mobile phone, desktop PC, but they can't be in use all at once. That's why when while listening to music a call is received, the headset switches to the call, and music pauses. When the conversation is over, playback starts again, and the volume level stays the same. Sony Ericcson HBH-DS970 manual explains: “In singlepoint mode, the headset is connected only to your phone. In multipoint mode, you can use the headset together with your phone and one of your other Bluetooth devices, where music is saved. Before you can listen to music from another device, the headset has to be added once to the device. The headset can be added to up to 10 devices. When you press the music button, the headset connects to the most recently used device.”

To tell you the truth, it has to be so, but sometimes users have different problems with such function, generally in WMP. In some cases after the call is ended, WMP starts playback, but with decreased volume, or no sound is heard at all (one needs to go to Settings to check "Set as Wireless Stereo", but in some cases the soft-reset is required). It's possible, that the fault is not of Sony, but of the player software. Yes, is is a tricky thing, especially while driving. Though, in most cases the switching from multipoint mode to single mode helps to resolve this hassle, as well as problems with pairing.

Package 

There is a standard charger included in sales package, and a charger socket is on the body of device. Wait just two hours – and your headset is ready for you. By the way, when being charged, it can operate as well (but in this case you are still wired :)). 6 hours of music playback are promised, but, unfortunately, some users complain they get only 4,5 – 5 hours, and our tests have shown only 3,5 hours of playing. Standby time is up to 300 hours. The range of HBH-DS970 is 4 - 10 meters, though in some cases it drops out three meters from connected device. The range depends on whether you are connected to a small mobile phone or to a powerful desktop computer, we had 8 m in our tests.

LCD

Battery icon is not very exact, not to say pretty bad – you can't tell visually how soon the music will stop. Most of the time you see that the charge is full, and then it starts to decrease dramatically, only after the beep you know exactly you have 10 minutes before it shuts down.

In some devices no track info or other information is visible, but still, the caller ID is announced by Microsoft Voice Command after the music stops, and you hear the ring-tone, designated for this one caller. All the personal tunes designated on your phone for caller or group of callers are transferred to the headset, so you have no problem with caller recognition.

Bad points

One more problem is irregular skipping. The way of it can be different. It can not skip during 3 – 4 tracks, and then skips for several seconds. May be the cause of it is compatibility problem of GSplayer or WMP with the HBH-DS970. With Pocket Player there is no skipping, the playback is smooth and music resumes with no problem after the call is ended, but controls don't work yet. So, it's up to you to decide which player is better. Some users experience skipping only while listening from the web if the cellular signal quality is not good, or, when microwaves are interfering (for example, when using microwave oven) there can be some stuttering of playback. There is no buffering, so it makes things worse. But, again, it does not happens so frequently, as it may seem.

Summary 

All in all, the device is very nice and worth buying. You will feast your eyes on its pretty black-and-orange colors and attractive design. The DS970 is easy to use, small, light but really powerful – the quality of sound is one of the best. And don't be afraid to damage it – it is not so fragile as it looks. Many solid-looking headphones will get broken considerably faster.

The great advantage of the headset is that you can pair it with several devices at once, answering the calls with ease. The LCD display is useful as well. The support of multiple simultaneous Bluetooth profiles is another advantage of HBH-DS970. A2DP and AVRCP functionality is in general excellent.

The disadvantage is, as some people say, the absence of clothes clip, problems with playback resumption after the call is ended, and sometimes skipping. Furthermore, there have been cases of refusing from pairing with some devices, so it was not easy to make it complete.

Despite some disadvantages, Sony Ericsson HBH-DS970 Bluetooth headset has not many worthy adversaries on the market.

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