It’s very difficult to look cool and use a Bluetooth headset. You’ll look like Mr. Borg from Planet Cyclon no matter what. That’s a given. But imagine driving a stick and needing to talk and needing to not hit the old lady in the sand colored Camry next to me. Coolness had to take a back seat to my will to live.

Make no mistake, I love gadget quests. I usually don’t have to do very much research, as gadget research just happens to be my hobby. So I started with the obvious, the Jawbone.

The Jawbone is really a wonderful design. Minimalist and surprisingly hip looking, it does away with any tacky blue lights and unnecessary buttons. Actually it doesn’t even look like it has a button on it at all. You press the whole front face of the thing to activate it. You know…like a Mac mouse. My mom would clearly not know how to use it due to it’s simplicity and that was a definite turn-on. It also has really great sound quality and actively blocks out background noise. What a charmer right? Yeah, except the Jawbone is twice the size it should be. So any cool cache that it racked up for it’s wonderful design is negated by it’s size. I don’t need a headset that looks like it’s actually holding my jaw together. Moving on.

I think I’ve made it plenty clear that I love retro-future stuff. If I could live in Disneyland’s Monsanto House of the Future (future post) from the 1960s I would. This little obsession lead me to the Motorola H12. It looks like a cross between a 1960s transistor radio, HAL9000 and the iPhone. So me. It’s really small (half the size of the hugeantic Jawbone), has noise cancellation, and includes 2 different chargers. You really only need one but I love that they included a fancy magnetic stand (a la Apple Magsafe) to showcase this deliciousness and a travel one with a cover that both charges and protects. Two stands are clearly unnecessary but serve to show how much Motorola has put into the design of this headset. Plus, panty-dropper David Beckham is the ‘face’ of the H12. Sold.

But what about the iPhone Bluetooth Headset? It’s small, and gorgeous, but you know what? It just doesn’t work that well. Technology is not yet up to the task of making such a small headset possible. It’s a shame but Apple should have held off on this one.

SIL = Shit I Love.

Update: Looks like the new Aliph Jawbone (Jawbone 2?) has made it to the FCC. Supposedly it's smaller than the current one and it looks like it's crafted out of surplus decoration from a 1957 Plymouth. So I love it.