Steves71’s Blog

Yesterday I bought a new Bluetooth headset to replace my aging Plantronics Discovery 640. I wanted something small, without an ear loop and preferable one that had a portable charger. This limited my choice dramatically but I finally decided on the Nextlink Invisio G5.

The Plantronics I had been using could be worn with or without an ear loop but I found that after a while the weight of it started to pull it out of my ear if no loop was used, particularly if I tilted my head or moved it sharply. From reviews I’ve read about the Invisio G5 this wouldn’t be a problem because of the soft rubber spring that fits inside the groove of your ear to help hold it in place.

The G5 measures 3.3cm in length and weighs just under 6grams. It’s smaller in real life than I had imagined from photos I’ve seen of it. Once in your ear you can hardly tell it’s there, you can feel it for the first few minutes but after that you get used to it and forget that you’re wearing it. This is the opposite of headsets I’ve used in the past which are comfortable when you first but them on but can become painful of irritating over time. I wore it for 5hrs last night and so far 6hrs today without and discomfort at all. Even though the length is small it does stick out from your ear quite a bit. If you look at the photo below you can see that the tube/column between the main body and the ear piece is quite long. Once it’s in place there is roughly a 1cm gap between the headset and your face, roughly enough to slide your finger between. At first I thought that this was going to be a problem and that it would keep falling off but because it hardly weighs anything once it’s in place it’s there to stay.

The G5 once charged has a reported talk time of 4hrs and standby of 150hrs. Now the neat thing about this headset is it’s portable charger. It looks like a large Zippo lighter. You charge the charger up (if that makes sense) then pop the G5 inside it, close the lid and the headset begins to charge. A fully charged “zippo” will recharge the G5 up to 5 times, increasing its talktime to 20hrs and standby to 30days, all without needing to be near a power supply.

So far it’s all been positive for the G5 but it does fall down in a few places. It can be paired with 8 devices at a time, try to pair more than 8 and it will start to forget the most least used ones. This is great I’ve never had a headset before that could pair with that many at any one time. The problem is that it can only connect to one device at a time. This isn’t really a problem for me, I have 2 phones on me at any one time but only use one of them for voice calls, the other is purely for email and data, but it could be a problem for those that carry a business and personal phone, both of which they make/receive calls on.

Voice quality isn’t outstanding, don’t get me wrong it isn’t bad but I have heard better. I was on a 35 minute call last night, though I could hear the other person quite clearly it was slightly tinny compared to some other headsets. The other person also said I sounded a bit more muffled than usual but it was still clear. In the past people have said that when on a headset my voice has been garbled, or there has been an echo, so a bit muffled really isn’t that bad.

As long as you don’t need to be connected to more than one device at a time I’d give the G5 an 8.5 out of 10, only let down slightly by the voice quality.