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This is a blog for John Weber. One of my joys in life is helping others get ahead in life. Content here will be focused on that from this date forward. John was a Skype for Business MVP (2015-2018) - before that, a Lync Server MVP (2010-2014). I used to write a variety of articles (https://tsoorad.blogspot.com) on technical issues with a smattering of other interests. I have a variety of certifications dating back to Novell CNE and working up through the Microsoft MCP stack to MCITP multiple times. FWIW, I am on my third career - ex-USMC, retired US Army. I have a fancy MBA. The opinions expressed on this blog are mine and mine alone.

2015/03/06

Plantronics BackBeat Pro

What do we have here?  Another toy!  How lucky am I?

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BackBeat Pro by Plantronics  Officially, here is the feature list:

 

Pairing

Paired with laptop – but could not get it to give me audio.  Don’t know why.  I stopped trying after a bit;  I don’t like using BT on my laptop – BT drivers tend to screw with parts of the Office Suite so for several years now I simply disable BT on the laptop.  So, for me, nothing lost.

Paired with my iPhone first time out, and worked nicely.  It was a little disarming to not have a microphone boom in front of me, but the audio quality for the voice sending portion of this headset was good-excellent.

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Audio Quality

Pandora music quality was excellent.  Volume was more than acceptable; there was more dB available than I find comfortable blasting into my gourd.  Frequency response, while I am not a human KHz meter, seemed to reproduce music well. The BackBeat Pro won’t ever replace my Infinity Studio Monitors in terms of pushing air, but hey, this thing is feeding straight into your ears.  And hugely impactful bass requires some size in the drivers with the ability to push air around.  Adele Rolling in the Deep has a thumpy bass line along with a solid drum beat – a good test of the music quality for bass response.  Even Garth Brooks sounded great. Overall, Music quality on the TsooRaD Goodness scale is at least a 9.

Controls

Holy Controllability Batman!  This thing has more controls than the space shuttle.  Well, maybe that is a tad exaggerated.  When paired with my iPhone, the BackBeat Pro rocked.  Full control of my play lists, and switching between music and using the phone was seamless.  Very well done. 

There is software for added functions, updating firmware, and for creating an entire Zen user experience. 

The Lync Link

Seeing as how I could not achieve BT nirvana with my laptop, what I did was leave the BackBeat paired to my phone and fired up my Lync Mobile client.  Nifty.  You have to love Lync Mobile.

Conclusions

A very nice piece of kit. Overall comfort level is excellent, audio quality is excellent.  Functionality with my iPhone was standard Plantronics goodness.  All of this and you get the Plantronics build quality also.

You can get your very own BackBeat Pro right here.

YMMV

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