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Please recommend a decent USB-headset to replace this rubbish one!

Help me, help me.

My USB headset is rubbish. Absolutely dire. It’s made by Gigaware and, if memory serves, I bought it for an outrageous price from one of those airport shops when I was on my way to America. You know when you pay something like £50 for bits of plastic that you know must have been manufactured for pennies? That’s how I felt. But I needed to have a headset as I had several important Skype conferences planned. Plus I didn’t want to rely on the MacBook’s own internal microphone as that can be a bit echoy.

The Gigaware headset, complete with rough plastic ear-muff things and boom mic has been with me for about 2 years now.

I need to do something about it.

When I use it, my Skype calls are fine for about 40-50 minutes before the headset just screws up. Literally it goes haywire and people can’t hear me. It’s like a build-up of static or something. So routinely, when I’ve been talking on Skype for more than 35 minutes I have to apologise to all concerned and briefly take the headset’s USB plug out… wait 5 seconds… plug it back in again and proceed as normal. To avoid this build up of… something.

I don’t know WHY I haven’t done something about this.

So.

Please help me out.

What’s the best USB headset you can buy?

Have you experimented with Bluetooth or infrared/wireless ones?

What do you recommend?

[Update: I found the exact headset model I’ve got. Must have bought it from Radioshack. $29 it says on their site. I’m sure it was more. Either way, I’m not a big fan.]

35 COMMENTS

  1. Ewan: I’ve heard lots of good things about the Freetalk Everyman headsets. They’re sold on the Skype website, so Skype thinks highly of them as well.

    Have a great weekend.
    MS

  2. I only do occasional skype calls, and mostly use them for tunes, but my Nokia BH-501’s work well for me (Bluetooth). There’s a newer in-ear model available I think.

  3. Just had a thought: that ‘static build-up’ – you don’t happen to be using a Mac, do you? A colleague has that self-same problem when he Skypes on a Mac using a Plantronics USB headset . . .

  4. Well, I wonder if it’s related to using a USB dongle connected headset with a Mac. One suspects a problem with the drivers for the USB. My colleague assumed it was the dongle – the headset works fine when connectd via the headset/mic sockets (I believe).

  5. maybe I should get a headset that uses those sockets rather than USB… I’m
    sure I’ve had other USB headsets that worked fine with the Mac though

  6. Maybe. But it is time/usage related and it seems to be related to use of the mic. I’ll see what I can find out as our afflicted here is the Engineering Director!

  7. You might want to check the Jabra Go 660 wireless headset with link 320 for your mobile and pc…

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