Trying to find a good noise cancelation solution for my home audio conferencing setup while working from home, I first tried the BlueParrott B550-XT (my review) as it had excellent reviews for its noise canceling capabilities. I liked the B550-XT, but found it a bit bulky. I wanted to find something that was small and light, while offering similar noise cancelation performance. With more research, I found several reviews that rated the Plantronics Voyager 5200 Bluetooth Headset very high. I ordered it online on Best Buy, and it was promptly delivered the next day.
![](http://technicalley.com/notes/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Plantronics_Voyager_5200-300x248.jpg)
The 5200 was paired easily with my iPhone. It fits comfortably on either ear, and is remarkably light. The The boom microphone stick is said to have 4 microphones, the the DSP running on the headset dynamically adjusts the gains on the 4 microphone to filter out ambient noise. So far I have done some limited testing with ambient noise and I am quite impressed with how well it is suppressed. I will do more detailed tests and compare it with the BlueParrott B550-XT in a review shortly.
The 5200 has about 7 hours of talk time on a fully charged battery. I have used it for two days and have attended about 10 meetings, and I can say that it is very comfortable to wear, and the sound quality is very good. I prefer this over the B550-XT because it is small and is hardly visible when I am on camera while video conferencing. I plan to use the B550-XT as a backup when I run out of batter on the 5200, and when working in very noisy conditions (e.g., with my dogs barking, or the gardener mowing the lawn, etc.) as I think it offers better noise cancelation (still to be confirmed with some good tests).
The 5200 also can connect to two devices at the same time, like two phones, or a phone and a PC. Connecting it to a Windows 10 PC directly as a Bluetooth device seems be a bit flaky. Plantonics’ solution is to use a Bluetooth dongle — the BT600 — on the PC and pair the headset to the dongle. I didn’t get the BT600 yet, but reading the reviews from other users, it seems to be a good solution.
Be First to Comment