Plantronics Discovery 975

Full Review

The new Plantronics Discovery 975 is a bluetooth earpiece that has  a simple design and is powered by technologies that improve user experience in terms of connectivity, comfortability and most importantly the call quality. Let's take a close look at this small but powerful earpiece.

Features
Plantronics loaded this tiny earpiece with couple of advanced sound technologies like the a dual-mic, AudioIQ2 technology and three layers of WindSmart portection. The two built-in microphones work by capturing voice and cancelling out unwanted background noise at the same time. While the built-in 20 band equalizer enhances your voice to sound more natural and crisp, the AudioIQ2 takes care of delivering a balanced sound to the incoming caller's voice.

The earpiece offers multi-point technology to pair up with two devices. The QuickPair technology is also included to make pairing a painless process. There is also voice-prompt for different status the earpiece is in. The Windsmart Technology has so much going for it. The groove vents on the mouthpiece is designed to deflect wind from the mic and it has acoustic fabric layer to block the wind and the mic has electonic filters to remove the wind noise - all to make the call quality better. Plantronics' effort into incorporating all these technologies is commendable and the price also proves that it is not just another ordinary bluetooth earpiece.

The Discovery 975 offers a convenient recharging case that sports an LCD screen to show the charge status for both the earpiece and charging base. The carrying case cum the charger is portable enough to hook up with a keychain via the keychain clip provided. The charging case can fully charge the earpiece twice which is handy. Apart from this, there is also a standard AC adapter charger in the package.

Design ,Fitting and Usability
The Discovery 975 has a minimalist design with just two buttons - one for volume and the other for call or power. The earpiece is sleek and  lightweight at 8 grams.   The earpiece bundled three sized ( small, medium and large) gel tips. Its main body consists of a square shaped plastic body that has a mix of dark grey and faux leather covering its sides. The long boom mic extended from the main body to the front and the top has a microUSB port for charging  while the back has a volume button. There is a call or power button at the center. The buttons' placement are convenient and to make use of its full features, reading the manual is recommended. There are also light indicators to show what status the earpiece is in.

The earpiece gel tips do not go deep inside the ear canal, so, at first use, the fitting of the earpice felt like it might fall easily but it sits securely in the ear even with rigorous movement. We found the medium and small gel tips offering the best fit for our ears.

There are a couple of steps to remember to make use of some features like mute function, pairing up with the second device, redialing last called number, etc. While the earpiece is powered on, holding down the volume button for two seconds puts the earpiece to mute, double tapping the call control button redials the last dialed number, and holding down the call button for two seconds activates voice dialing.

Remembering all these steps and the number of times the light indicator flashes that varies for different statuses seem cumbersome at first, but, once you started to use the earpiece on regular basis, it is not difficult to get used to. Further, long term usage is comfortable with the small gel tips but this we think can vary from person to person.

Reception and Quality
The earpiece fully charged up in 1.5 hours and pairing up with Android and iOS devices happened without any glitch. With the earpiece fitted securely, we first checked out the earpiece reception within its claimed range which is 10 meters and within its range, we did not face any drop in connection nor on the degrade in call quality.

The earpiece delivered very natural sounding voice with sufficient amount of volume. Voice sounded very clear without any piercing tone and no distortion -- the built-in 20-band EQ did a pretty job of reproducing a natural sound. The sound quality is a big leap from the handsets sound quality we tested with which includes iPhone 3GS, HTC Legend andLG Optimus One, We wished the maximum volume were a few decibels higher though as the gel tips did not really isolate the noise unlike the those In-Ears headphones and this made hearing the caller's voice a bit difficult in a noisy environment.

The Windsmart technology did help keeping the voice clear and isolating the background music or noise. In a noisy environment like a busy Bangalore traffic though, we had to make sure the microphone stays close to the mouth as our callers asked us we had to raise our voice a little louder as our callers had a hard time hearing us but this happened rarely.

The battery lasted up to 4 hours and half during our usage which is close to rated 5 hours and the charging case can fully charge the earpiece two times which is a plus.

Bottom Line

The Plantronic Discovery 975 is a feature-packed bluetooth headset that offered good design and build quality. It comes with a handy charging case and it offers very good performance that is bettered only by Plantronics Voyager PRO when it comes to call quality. Priced at Rs.5,490, it is a bit expensive but for its extra battery life and performance, it is a good earpiece to own for daily use.