I ordered a couple of these from Woot a few weeks ago.
Overall, I have to say I am disappointed.
On the plus side, the unit did charge quickly, and I had no problems pairing it either with the Blackberry or with my Lenovo T60P. Well, I had no problems with the T60P once I had uninstalled the Bluetooth driver and installed the latest version - but I attribute that to the OS build that was supplied with the system when I received it, not with the headset. As a hint, after you remove the old Bluetooth driver and reboot, you must press Function+F5 to get the system to activate the Bluetooth so the system will complete the rest of the installation. As with many devices, you must cancel the Microsoft default driver installation, and manually run the updated driver installer. You must be VERY patient with the new driver installation, as it installs a number of services / sub devices which take quite a while but don't provide progress bars to let you know that something is going on in the background.
Price was good - $6.95 each plus $5 shipping. But, I guess you get what you pay for.
Shipping took a ridiculously long time. Woot appeared to get the product out of their warehouse in a reasonable amount of time, but then the box just languished with the shipper. All told, it took fourteen days to arrive. Granted, I ordered it shortly before Christmas, so there was the Christmas rush, plus the New Year holiday, but still... I could tell from the tracking information that the box was just sitting in a "sortation" center. In looking at the Woot forum entry for this item, it appears I was not alone.
Good thing I ordered two, as the first one broke within two days.
The earpiece isn't horrible, but it isn't comfortable either. Without the ear stablizer hook, the unit wouldn't stay on my head, as the ear plug is quite large. Because it doesn't fit snugly in my ear, there is some background noise which makes it difficult for me to hear, even with the volume on both the unit and the Blackberry turned up to maximum.
As an experiment, I tried to see if the earpiece from my Jabra headset would fit on the integrated ear piece. It did, which helped both with the volume and the comfort. I don't know if putting the Jabra earpiece on had any effect on the unit breaking, so I am not taking a chance with the other one, but if it did, that speaks to the overall (lack of) quality of the item in my opinion.
Another big issue is the constantly blinking blue led embedded into the headset. During the day, it makes you look even more dorkish that you already do wearing a bluetooth headset. At night, the light is bright enough to be downright distracting / annoying.
This is my second bad experience with Soyo. When I built my first PC from components, I purchased a Soyo motherboard. I had problems with it from day one, although I did finally get it working for the most part, only to have it die a year or so later (post warranty) due to faulty capacitors.
Even at $12 total, I would not recommend this headset.
PS. A few days after I wrote this (but before I got around to publishing it) I sent a note to Woot asking what my options were. In part, I said:
I have taken a look at the Soyo web site (http://www.soyogroup.com) to see about getting warranty service. Unforunately, Soyo appears to charge $5 for warranty service. This seems quite unreasonable for a product for which I only paid $7.99 and which only worked for two days! Not to mention, I will have to pay to ship it to them. I have also read that generally speaking, Soyo warranty service leaves much to be desired. I know my previous experience with Soyo was less than satisfactory – in fact I really struggled with whether to partake in this Woot because of that. Guess I’m a slow learner.
I almost immediately received an automated response which in part read:
Your email to Woot Member Services has been received. This is an automated reply.
Your request has been assigned Case # XYZ.
As you might expect, we receive a fairly large volume of emails. This reply is sent from our case assignment system to indicate your position in the queue has been reserved. Our staff works Monday through Friday during normal business hours in an effort to keep response times under 1 business day. However, in recent peak times we have fallen behind-we thank you in advance for your patience as we work to improve our efficiency. Please be confident that we will respond and resolve your issue.
We have made recent moves to increase staff, cross-train for interdepartmental assistance, and improve case handling automation to serve all members better in the near future. For information on job openings in the Dallas area, visit: http://www.woot.com/Jobs.aspx
Thank you for your support,
Member Services
I found this to be pretty cool. Quick response, set my expectations, and did some recruiting all at once.
I found it even cooler when a couple of days later, I received an email from Woot customer service apologizing for my difficulties and informing me that a replacement unit would be sent out to me at no charge within a few days. I still haven't received a shipping notification much less the replacement unit, but I am hopeful.
I still won't say overall that this was a great purchasing experience, but Woot's handling of my email left me feeling much less negative. I might be a bit more careful as to what I order (I was quite pleased with my other purchase from Woot) but I am fairly confident that I will do business with them again.
For the moment, I plan to stick with my old school wired Jabra headset for use with my Blackberry, and plan to use the Soyo headset for Skype / OneSuite IP telephony with my laptop, where I am likely to be in quieter environments (where the lack of volume shouldn't be as big an issue) and where I would appreciate not being tethered to the laptop by a wired headset. Plus, if I use the Bluetooth headset, the purchase won't be totally for naught, and I won't have to buy an adapter to use my Jabra headset with the standard two jack (separate headphone and microphone) PC audio connections or continue to suffer with the uncomfortable cheapo headset/microphone I purchased in The Netherlands.
Digg It!
Bookmark it!
Posted by David at January 10, 2008 10:05 PM