Full Review

30 December 2003 - The latest legislation in the UK means we can on longer use our phones in the car whilst driving. Therefore UK drivers have to turn to hands free kits to keep in touch with the office whilst on the road. The options available are simple; either using wires or Bluetooth. Bluetooth obviously has the advantage, simply pair a headset to your Bluetooth enabled phone and away you go. Well when the headsets cost in the region of £80 that's what you hope.

On the surface the Bodyglove Bluetooth headset looks very stylish. The company that is renowned for making surf gear since the eighties has done well to bring the same style to is range of mobile phone accessories. However looks are only skin deep and unfortunately for this model that couldn't be any closer to the truth.

Pairing the device isn't that tough, and recognising the device didn't seem to cause any problems. It was when it came to actually using the headset that the problems started to occur. The first was that it took an inordinate amount of time to connect the device to the phone every time you wanted to use it. Furthermore the quality of signal was poor at the best of times. Testing it we phoned a number of people on both landlines and mobile phones and every one of the people we telephoned complained about the quality of the line. Screeching, hissing, and voice dropouts were just some of the comments we received. One person even went as far as telling us that if we ever phoned them again using the device they wouldn't talk to us. Not something you want to hear after spending £80.

VERDICT
You've probably guessed that we weren't very happy with this product, which overall is a shame because on the outside the headset looks the business. The rubberised casing, the smallness of it all implied so much, its just a shame that the insides couldn't live up to the hype the outer package lays down. Looks only get you so far.