Review If you are going to splash out on a set of Bluetooth headphones it makes sense to buy a pair that can fulfill a multitude of roles from comfortable home listening to hands-free telephony to outdoor activity in weather both fair and foul. Indeed, Jaybird's SB1 Sportsband headphones endeavour to satisfy all these roles.

For tunes and talk: Jaybird's SB1 Sportsband

First impressions are very favourable with the SB1 Sportsband looking sleek and smart and feeling very well made. At 103g, despite the aluminium slide adjusters, you can almost forget you are wearing them. The nicely tensioned headband and solid ear-piece ball mounts make for a snug but not overly tight fit. The design is pretty low profile too with the earpieces only adding 20mm to each side of your head.

These headphones also sit securely, which is important because – as suggested by the use of the word 'sport' in the name – they are targeted at the more active amongst us. The rubberised underside of the headband gripped my noggin well enough to allow me to go running and cycling without fear they would slide off.

To further lure the athlete, Jaybird offers a lifetime guarantee against damage caused by excessive sweating – or glowing for the lasses – and reckons the SB1 Sportsband is shower proof. To test the latter I went out for a jog in a pretty heavy downpour and the headphones suffered no ill effects.

Colourful options, if you must, for the sportier look perhaps?

The SB1 has an integrated microphone built into the right hand earpiece which uses something Jaybird calls Clear Voice Capture. However that works technically, it certainly succeeds in making the SB1 Sportsband one of the better headsets for reducing background noise that I have used. Paired to an Android phone, the SB1 Sportsband handled the whole music to call and back transition perfectly.

Unsurprisingly, given the inherent limitations of Bluetooth and the absence of a trick codec like apt-X, the quality of music playback isn't equal to the best a wired headset can provide. Compared to my reference cabled Sennheisers, the SB1 sounded just a little dull and lifeless in the mid range and the bass was a touch woolly.

Simple controls, easy to finger

On the plus side, there was no trace of sibilance in the vocals and plenty of volume on tap. When connected to a mobile phone or Bluetooth enabled PMP they are eminently usable, if not exactly spectacular performers. While finishing off this review I listened to Jennifer Warnes' Famous Blue Raincoat album from my HTC Hero and couldn't seriously fault the Sportsbands' performance.

The buttons on the right-hand earpiece offer full AVRCP music player control along with the facility to answer or reject calls and adjust the volume. The buttons are large and well laid out and fall easily to the finger so you won't be left tapping the side of your head in frustration while trying to adjust the volume or answer a call.

Paring proved straight forward to everything I tried including a mobile and a Linux netbook, though only two devices can be paired at a time. Jaybird reckons the SB1s range is a par-for-the-course 10 metres, which was borne out by my tests. As long as I kept within that range, the Sportbands remained free of interference or breakup.

Power comes from a 250mAh battery that should be good for 11 hours of talk time, 8 hours of music playback and 250 hours on stand by. I tested the second of those claims by streaming music until the phones died and recorded a time of 7 hours 20. Re-charging is from USB and will take 2.5 hours. The USB connector on the headphones is non-standard – apparently, the design helps with the sweat proofing – so don't lose the cable.

A set of SB1 Sportsband headphones will set you back around £90 which is a one-to-one translation of the US $ price and makes them more expensive than Jabra's Halo headset, which is the obvious competition.

Stylish and sonically respectable

The Jabra's talk-time is less at 8 hours verses 11, the touch-sensitive controls are rather more fiddly to use when you have the headset on your bonce and it is not proofed against rain or perspiration but it does have a corded option for use with non-Bluetooth devices or when the battery dies and at 80g is a bit lighter.

Verdict

As a versatile set of Bluetooth cans, the Jaybird SB1 Sportsband has a lot going for it. It's comfortable enough for prolonged home use yet secure enough to take to the running or cycle track, produce as good a sound as anything connected using Bluetooth lacking apt-X can be deliver and works faultlessly as a hands free device. Combine that with a longer than usual battery life and the sweat/shower proof design and they are well worth a look. ®

Thanks to AdvancedMP3Players for the loan of the review sample.

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