LG Tone Infinim Bluetooth Stereo Headset

Pros - Easy to use, intuitive. - Lightweight in-ear part is comfortable. - Retracting cables are awesome. - Excellent ambient noise isolation. - Clear, distortion-free audio. - Excellent call quality. - Styling tops other Tones. - Very, very impressive Bluetooth connectivity robustness. (iPhone 6s, iPad 2, X1 Yoga) Cons - Quite expensive right now. - Bass is typical earbud bass: tiny. - No way I'm running with this. - Harder to hide under collar. Just offering my differing experience from the previous user. They're not necessarily wrong, but it'd be unfair to condemn these great headsets without a diversity of experience. Just to give a little background about my experience: I'm new to the Tone family. I've been a iPod and Apple earbud user for just about as long as the iPod has existed. My ears love the current rigid Apple ear buds, for running, for work, for whatever, and only recently have I really wanted to cut the cord. If Apple actually made wireless earbuds, I'd probably just get those. I started off with a pair of BlueBud X from BlueJay. Tons of people loved them and since they upgraded recently, the old ones could be had cheaply. But I instantly had severe connectivity issues with my iPhone 6s. Completely unusable for anything. Probably a bad unit, but I could also tell that the larger, heavy in-ear buds wouldn't be working for me, and the sound really was only okay. I'm not that picky, but they weren't really worth it. I don't understand how the reviewers of other Bluetooth headsets can tolerate any audio gaps at all. I hate the feel of over-the-ear (supra-aural) types and I normally wear glasses, so the full-ear (circumaural) type start to annoy after a short while. I started looking at LG's Tones as the market leader in torc-style earbuds (Samsung also appears to have some nice, inexpensive alternatives) and really stayed there based on reviews and style. What drew me to the HBS-910 over, say, the cool-looking and reviewed HBS-900 or HBS-810 was mainly style. They all seem equivalent in utility to the non-picky consumer, but in my opinion the HBS-910 was the first Tone that didn't look like a J.J. Abrams mind-control device. Totally my opinion, but how else do consumers choose? Is it worth an extra $50+ to look cool? Given how much I intend to use these, yeah... Because of my intended usage scenarios: playing music for my work and the ability to use for calls with customers/vendors with high-quality audio, these appear to be perfect. I listened to Beethoven's 5th and 7th, and some rock and while I've never been fully happy with the tinny bass on any earbuds, the fidelity is awesome and the noise isolation is very good--people will now sneak up on you. I will say that after using them a few days, I can say that proper ear canal isolation will improve the bass a bit, but all other frequencies are surprisingly well-reproduced. The first earbuds I've used where the actual quality of the recording now dearly matters. The moment I took out the earbuds, I was startled at how much ambient fan and ventilation noise was being cut out. The earbuds are the completely sealed type, rather than the kind that breathes, just FYI. That means they'd typically be very sensitive to cable noise in my experience, but the tiny cables on the HBS-910 are flexible enough that I never really noticed. Anyway, the packaging is simple and you're going from 0 to 60 in about 5 seconds. Open, turn on, they immediately pair, and then you're off to the races. Again, I have an iPhone 6s so your mileage may vary. I had zero problems with setup and actually all the controls on the torc were intuitive and responsive, having never used the Tone line before. Great engineering and design. The torc feels light around the neck, the buds were comfy in my ears so far (I fiddled a bit to get a nice balance between isolation and comfort), and both the music quality and the call quality on both sides appears to be excellent. I was very impressed with the Bluetooth range, leaving my phone on the desk and walking around into different rooms with no cutout. I can put my phone in my pockets, cover it with my hand, even sit completely on the darned thing and I've yet to experience a dropout. I use wireless (2.4 GHz) keyboards and mice in our office, and all the office equipment (printer, scanner, etc...) are all 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi devices, so I expect this to be a reasonably hostile environment for the headset. No problem. As a wireless engineer, I'm actually very impressed with the wireless performance, which is why I had to post about it. I use a multitude of other Bluetooth devices with varying levels of performance and this is by far the best-performing. As I mentioned, I do have an iPhone 6s, so other Bluetooth hosts may be less successful, but it appears that if you have problems it's most likely NOT the fault of the HBS-910. Since using them today, I've walked around the office, taken calls seamlessly, and have suffered nary an audio drop. All my callers said the call quality on their end was great. Anyway, I'll be using these for work, for plane rides, for listening to NPR and for calling my mother. I think LG really nailed it with these and I'm guessing if you wait a few months, they'll come down from the early-adopter $150 to the $100 price range of the previous generations. So long as the tiny audio cables will last for the lifetime of the torc, I think it's well worth it.