Lately, I have had my first hands on two Bluetooth headsets from Nokia at the same time. I’ve already given you my first opinion of these headsets during episode 40 of Driving with the Guru. Now, instead of reviewing each of the headsets alone, I decided to compare the overall experience between the fancy top-of-the-line headset, the BH-803, and the typical average headset, the BH-101. You would think that the BH-101 would be crushed in less than a blink, but surprisingly, the fight was much closer than you think.
Looks
The BH-803 definitely wins in the looks category because it brings a more fancy and elegant style than the BH-101, it’s also thinner and smaller. It carries a lot of design resemblance with the newer Nseries, like the N82 Black, N81, N95 8GB, N78 and N96, in that it is built with the same shiny black plastic material. The BH-101 has a more typical look with matte black plastic.
The BH-101 has typical volume up and down, as well as a call key. Although the volume buttons are a bit small, they work very well and give a nice feedback when they are pressed. The BH-803 has a good call key, but the volume area is a touch sensitive one where you glide your fingers upwards to increase the volume and downwards to decrease it. I found it very inconvenient to use it as there is no way to actually know how much you increased or decreased the volume, and sometimes I would end up deafened by the sound or muting it by mistake.
LED lights
The BH-101 has one of the poorest LED notification placement, since it’s stuck under black plastic, and this means it’s almost invisible in well lit conditions especially under sunlight. The BH-803 has better LED visibility but the system is more annoying, with different colors and frequencies of blinking pointing to different functions. Honestly, this was my second ever bluetooth headset, so I am not an expert, but I had to read the manual to get this one going, because I spent 2 hours stupidly trying to get it to pair with my phone. After reading the manual and knowing what to do, it immediately worked, but the out-of-the-box experience was ruined for me.
Comfort
Although both of the headsets look like they have a huge ear piece, I found myself easily adjusting to the BH-101’s size and not even noticing wearing it after a while. With the BH-803, the ear piece was painful to wear for anything more than 5 minutes, maybe I just have small ears, but I would’ve loved to have more ear piece sizes, especially considering the price of this headset.
This is more of a subjective opinion, but I believe the BH-803 has a better range than the BH-101. I couldn’t test them under the same conditions, so take it with a grain of salt.
Sound Quality
Call quality is very good on both headsets, with none seaming better than the other. Music quality on the other hand is absolutely dreadful on the BH-101, whereas it’s not bad on the BH-803. I found it nice to use not to listen to music, but to game sounds and soundtracks while playing in public waiting rooms (like a doctor’s).
Battery and Charging
The BH-101 uses the typical small Nokia charging port, and this means that you can basically carry one charger for your phone and your headset, which is highly convenient. The BH-803 uses the Micro-USB charger, which I found totally annoying because that would mean that I’ll need to carry a separate charger just for it. But then again charging is not much of a problem since both of these have an impressive battery life: during the 2 weeks that I used them simultaneously, I only charged them once before starting to use them. Granted, I am not a frequent caller, but I had them on whenever I was out driving or walking.
Convenience Factors
The BH-803 comes with two nice gadgets, an around the neck and cloth clip for carrying it. Although this somehow solves the painful ear piece problem, allowing you to remove the headset whenever it’s not in use, I found myself rather enjoying the gadgets and wishing they came with the BH-101. The BH-101 has a good adjustable ear loop, whereas the BH-803 has a stiff one; on the other hand, the BH-803’s loop can be easily turned to switch between right and left ear, whereas the BH-101’s loop has to be removed, turned and put back in place.
Honestly, each one of these headsets comes with a list of good points and a list of bad ones. Although overall I personally prefer the BH-101, it isn’t a huge win, and I would consider switching to the BH-803 if the ear piece came with more size offerings. But at the price difference between these 2, I wouldn’t mind recommending the BH-101 to anyone who’s looking for a cheap and functional headset.
