Look Mom, No Hands! a MOTOROKR S9 Review

‘Stylish, comfortable and engineered with cutting-edge Bluetooth wireless technology, the Motorola S9 helps provide wireless access to music and voice calls – while on the go.’

– Motorola

Sure, this is what the company says about its newest Stereo Bluetooth Headset the MOTOROKR S9. We put it thru the wringer and you will see the results are surprising!

Look and Feel

Quality
Digging into the quality of the device. The S9 is made of a hardened plastic with a red (or blue) rubber frame encased in hard plastic. This puts some ease on using it and makes it light weight ~1.0 oz. It comes in a ‘sloping u shape’ That has become standard for behind the head/neck headphones. The difference in this product, it doesn’t actually touch the back of your neck. It self balances behind your head with the weight mostly on your ears. You would think this wold be a problem but the design makes it all seem almost featherweight!

Fit
Most Bluetooth headsets usually fit poorly and are heavy. This, in my opinion, is because of the ‘where to put the battery and the radio’ scenario. With the S9 it is all behind you literally. It comes with three sets of interchangeable ear plugs. (alleviates one of the biggest complaints about hard plastic not fitting in the ear quite the same) I use the dome shaped plus versus the ‘Crescent’ shaped ones. So not only does it conceal itself behind your head, and you may not look as cool as Beckham wearing one, at least you don’t have a Star Trek communicator sticking out of your ear!

Usage, Signal and Battery
Connecting via bluetooth was simple. The standard passcode was in effect. Didn’t have to hold any buttons down, or click this and press that three times. Turn the S9 on and it pairs with your device in seconds! I use it daily to listen to podcasts and music at my desk. The S9 comes with the AVD2P/AVRCP profile as well as the standard mobile profiles. Using the FF/REW buttons are simple.. they are touch sensitive, so you aren’t constantly pushing the headset into your ear with each press. The left side of the device has the phone, vol+, vol- buttons, while the right has the play/pause, ff,rew buttons. The great thing about this device is the music muting/pause feature when a call comes thru. The only missing is that phone calls aren’t in stereo, they only come out of the left speaker. The battery last 6 hours according to the manual, but i have left mine uncharged for days without any problems. It shuts off when time has lapsed without a bluetooth connection. charging is a snap. You can use any standard mini USB cable to charge from your powered USB port. Distance is great you can usually go about 25 ft to 30ft without getting any static. But that is true for most BT devices on the market. The other thing to notice is when moving around (running etc) you don’t get that warbling signal. It stays true and pure. Calls come in clearly with no echo and little to no background noise, and my voice sounds similar to using the handset.

Accessories
The device comes with the standard Motorola mini USB cable and three ear pieces to choose from.

Misc
Surprisingly a test i didn’t have to do, but it ended up happening was plugging it into my mac to charge. The mac recognized it as a BT headset (as did Windows XP) and i have used it to stream audio from my mac (Leopard) to the headset without any issues.

Overall
Very satisfied with this product. The cost was 109$ with a 30$ rebate, total cost of 79$. Worth the price and the time.

Written by Sydney