Despite sporting one of the worst names in the annals of consumer electronics, the Lubix UBHS-NC1 makes a name for itself by its clever design. Each of the earphones is half of a single unit—a rounded rectangle with earbuds jutting out on one side, and a smooth finish on the other. When not in use, you wear the unit by attaching the two haves together, with the smooth side facing out. The connection is magnetic, accompanied by a solid, reassuring click. The cord between the headphones functions as a lanyard. When talking or listening to music, the cord drapes behind the neck, and has an adjustable choker to take up the slack.
You can also stow the Lubix very neatly in your pocket by winding the neckband around the unit, through the earbuds; then wrapping the final portion of neckband around the outside of the earbuds, and securing it with the choker. It takes about ten seconds to wind or unwind—a fraction of the time it would take to untangle a typical wired headset.
The left headphone harbors all of the unit’s controls: volume and 3D Sound; connection and disconnection; and track play and navigation. Lubix has crammed an amazing amount of functionality into the two control buttons. Finally, there is a separate power switch.
The non-replaceable battery is supposed to charge in 2 hours (my charges averaged 3), and yield 6 hours of continuous talk time, 5 hours of music time and 80 hours of standby time. Unfortunately, I was unable to verify these figures, for reasons that will become apparent later. The unit is charged with an included USB cable that plugs into a USB adapter, also included.
According to Lubix, the device supports multi pairing, which allows the use of the headset with multiple host devices simultaneously. You can, for example, listen to music streamed from your laptop, then take a call on your Treo.
For phone calls, the incoming sound was quite good, but I received several complaints about the outgoing sound before the complainers were aware that I was using a new product.
“Quite good” is also how I would characterize the music quality. Interestingly, this might actually have to do with SAG. For some reason, I noticed a marked improvement in the sound quality after purging SAG 1.11 and doing a clean install of 1.12. Running 1.12 without first uninstalling a previous version probably leaves some of the old configurations in the PDB files.
This would be the Bluetooth headset I would want to use on a daily basis. The overall array of comfort, portability and smart controller design are unbeatable. It’s a great piece of hardware.
Unfortunately, its fate on Palm OS Treos is currently tied to SAG 1.12, which in my experience is fraught with problems. Reports from other POS Treo users differ, so if you would like to test your luck, be warned. I’m going to keep my pair in hopes that the next revision of SAG resolves my problems.
Reports from Windows Mobile users have been more consistently positive. If you have a Treo 750, or any phone that supports A2DP natively, the Lubix is definitely recommended.
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