2. Motorola MOTOROKR S9

The MOTOROKR S9s are light and sporty headphones but they have a good range of features. They’re also inconspicuous and you can wear them when working out. Back-of-the-neck headphones are a good choice if you don’t want large over-the-ear headphones or an in-ear headset. But although the two arms of the S9s are flexible, so they fit a range of head sizes, the rigid central section can sit awkwardly at the back of your neck. You need to pull your ears through the over-ear hooks and adjust the ear buds so they fit comfortably. These sit just inside your ears, although they don’t block out much external noise, and there are three sizes of rubber tips to choose from.

The Motorola MOTOROKR S9 headphones are very portable.

Pairing is simple if you’re connecting to one device; if you’ve already put the headphones on you hear an audio tone so you know you’ve got it right. The S9s can connect to a phone and a media player at the same time, so you’re not restricted to playing music on your phone — but there are more steps required to set this up. Some devices won’t re-establish a Bluetooth connection automatically, so there are shortcuts to help you re-establish your phone and music connections quickly. This complexity is due to the other devices rather than the headphones, so it’s good to see Motorola making the effort to deal with the issue.

It’s also good to see the mini-USB connection (under a rubber flap in the central section). Keeping the S9s small and light means a smaller battery and the seven hours of playback is on the low side, so it’s important that you can charge from any USB port. Given that it’s going to be at the back of your neck, the range of colors that the LED here flashes to indicate whether you’re playing music or you’ve muted a phone call seem rather pointless, and there are too many audio tones to distinguish what button you’ve pressed by listening. That’s a problem because the controls are very small. The volume controls are on either side of the talk button on the left ear bud and the forward and back buttons are on either side of the pause/play button on the right ear bud. The buttons are logically arranged but they’re also very sensitive. You barely need to press them, which means it’s easy to change the track or volume when you’re feeling for the button to pause the music or end a call.

The S9s have a lot of phone features and most of them are assigned to the talk button but they’re logical; pressing the talk button answers an incoming call, hangs up, switches to a second call or activates voice dialing, depending on whether there’s a call on the line or not. Using the play/pause button to reject a call or mute it is logical as well, so you’re more likely to use the features than if you had to memorize a sequence of presses.

Reception is excellent with the S9s; you can walk out of the room and be far away from your media player before you get out of range. When the S9s do become out of range from the media player, the sound cuts out cleanly rather than breaking up noisily. The audio sound quality is good but not exceptional. There’s plenty of volume, stereo separation is good, bass is reasonable and detail is clear.

The quality of phone conversations is generally good too; phone calls are mono so you hear them in the left ear bud only. The microphone is concealed in the right ear bud. The noise cancellation deals well with background noise in most cases, although it’s not up to the standard of the Jawbone. The MOTOROKR S9s are a good choice for portability and style at a reasonable price.