3. In Use & Sound Quality

Fully charging the headset will take around 3 hours, with 10 hours of battery time promised. I only got 8, but that's still a full working day of music listening and call making, so it's not bad "mileage" at all.

Pairing the set up to other devices, be they phones or computers, is also simple. The aforementioned flashing lights scheme works quite well, and I had no trouble pairing it up with any of my phones or PDAs. (I know it sounds great to be able to say that in plural, but consider how many wires I have crawling over my desk like possessed vines...) The controls to switch between music and an incoming call also work quite well, and probably save you a few seconds of fumbling for audio controls so you can actually pick up the phone.

The headset is ostensibly capable of playing MP3s from phones that support it, but beware the fine print: the phone has to support the A2DP Bluetooth profile for stereo sound.

Call quality is good, and certainly no worse than what you get from a mono phone on a normal day. However, the headset does sometimes have a tendency to lag or jump the connection for a second or two. This is annoying while listening to music, and damn well confusing when trying to hold a conversation with someone. It is only an occasional hiccup, and more a limitation of Bluetooth than the headset itself, but is worthy of note.

In terms of range, you can get about 30 feet (10 m) away from the Bluetooth device to which the headset is paired before things start to get patchy. This can obviously vary depending on all the variables that sometimes interrupt radio signals, but you'll certainly have room to walk around a small to medium sized office while holding a conversation on a phone several paces away.

Sound quality is excellent for a headset in this category. You can get much chunkier headsets with much better sound, but they're all wired. As Bluetooth headsets go, the Pulsar 590A is head and shoulders above what we've come to expect, even managing decent (but nothing mind blowing) bass. The headset is suitable for listening to music and watching films. You can get better, but not this mobile.

While playing games you will find that the stereo headset lives up to the task of being able to provide directional sound, but the slight (and sometimes increasing) delay in sending a Bluetooth signal, and the odd burp in which the sound goes to hell, may be too much of a drawback for such a precise audio science as online gaming. Then again, does one really need a Bluetooth headset for gaming anyway? The idea of the Bluetooth is to allow you to walk around a bit, which you won't be doing when you're glued to your keyboard in Counter-Strike.

In Conclusion

The Plantronics Pulsar 590A is certainly the best stereo Bluetooth headset we've come across; one does not suffer any major compromises in sound quality for the mobility of the set. The extra peripherals for the headset are an extremely nice touch, and serve to allow the headset to work under multimedia as well as mobile conditions. With the Bluetooth adapter included in the package, the Pulsar 590A becomes a viable solution to plug into your daughters stereo system or iPod as well as your own mobile phone, if you desire some peace and quiet.

Priced at around $200-depending on where you shop, and whether you get the vanilla 590 or the extra kitted-out 590A-the Pulsar 590 is robust enough to survive travel and smart enough to make it easy, comfortable and enjoyable.