6. Plantronics Pulsar 590A

The Pulsars are fairly large, futuristic-looking over-the-ear headphones. They’re also fairly pricey (up to $175) but for that Plantronics is generous with the accessories. For a start you get a pre-paired “universal adapter” so you can use the Pulsars with any music player (or indeed anything with a headphone socket). You also get a headphone cable for use on planes or when you run out of batteries. Sensibly, plugging in the cable turns off all the controls so you can’t accidentally turn Bluetooth back on.

The universal adapter means you can use the Plantronics Pulsar 590A headphones with any music player. To make sure you can charge the adapter and the 590A headphones at the same time, you get a power adapter with two power connectors, a USB cable with a single connector and a desktop cradle for holding the headphones neatly and charging them at the same time. Only one side of the headphones has a connector for charging but the cradle has connectors on both sides so it doesn’t matter which way round you put them down. There’s space in the hard case to carry the headphones, adapter, flight cable and either the USB cable and dock or the power adapter (and it’s still half the size of the Creative CB8100s carry case). That’s just as well, because while the connector is a clever design that means you don’t have to push a fiddly connector into a socket – it just snaps into place – it’s also totally proprietary so you have to take the cable with you if you’re away for more than a day.

Despite the size, the Pulsars aren’t heavy. They’re very comfortable and the wide headband stops them shifting around while you’re wearing them.

Pairing is simple; you hold down one button while turning the Pulsars on and release it when the indicator light flashes red and blue, which doesn’t take as long as on some headphones and it happens more reliably. All the controls are on the right headphone, as is the extending voice tube – a metal-capped glass tube that pulls much farther out from the headphones than you’d expect, like a boom mike. There’s a spare tube but it’s more robust than it seems. There are only six buttons, because all the phone features are assigned to short or long presses on the phone button with tones to tell you what you’ve done. The phone button and the single button beneath it that mutes phone calls and controls play and pause for music are both indented so they’re easy to find. You don’t have to hit them exactly, either; the whole upper and lower area of the ear-piece serves as buttons.

Volume control and forward and back buttons are arranged in a circle around the edge of the headphone and they’re big enough to find fairly easily without looking, but they’re a little stiffer than the two central buttons. You know when you’ve pressed a button so the audio tone that confirms it may be more intrusive than useful and there’s a slight but noticeable delay when skipping between tracks. The arrangement is logical enough so you’ll learn to control your music very quickly, but the phone functions can be more confusing unless you’re already used to the Plantronics controls. The audio quality for music is good. There’s plenty of volume. Details are clear (though not as crisp as on our reference Shure headphones or the Etymotic ETY8s). Bass is excellent, even at low volume (as on the intro to Massive Attack’s Angel); you don’t have to push the volume up to hear the details and the bass is rich and resonant. Midtones and voices are clear and well defined, although treble can be a little underpowered. Stereo separation is excellent. The strong signal will go through one brick wall, and when it’s interrupted by distance, it cuts out cleanly rather than letting you hear the signal breaking up. The quality with the universal adapter is fair, but taking the analogue headphone signal doesn’t give the same quality as getting it directly through A2DP on any device. Audio quality on phone calls is also good, and the extending tube works well and cuts out a certain amount of background noise. The Plantronics Pulsar 590As aren’t cheap but they’re the best combination of headset and headphone we tested.