I finally visited the local SonyStyle store here in Atlanta the other day* and had a great experience along with my girlfriend. My mission was to buy the DR-BT21IK/B bluetooth headphone and iPod transmitter combo. The DR-BT21IK/B is actually a combination of the DR-BT21G bluetooth headphone and TMR-BT9iP stereo bluetooth transmitter. This rechargeable set of headphones will provide you with approximately 11 hours of music playback time on a single charge and they fold neatly for storage. Sony fans will expect the usual quality sound from the 30mm driver units, while a remote control of play, stop, fast forward and rewind on the earpiece is fully compatible with the iPod, iPhone, and iTouch. A subtle built-in microphone is also included for recording your voice, or for making bluetooth phone calls on the iPhone.
Most people that I regularly talk to, and are very critical of bluetooth headsets, admit that it’s the best sounding bluetooth headset they’ve ever heard. The sound quality is A2DP so it’s pretty solid for wireless, and has the usual 10m range. It’s sweet to have your iPhone 10 feet away from you with zero loss in quality. Most people shouldn’t expect jawdropping sound, but it is more than sufficient for portable use and the additional novelty of wireless seems much less like a novelty this time around. It’s also really nice that I can use these headphones with my iPhone, Vaio TX (with bluetooth), and my PS3.
Unfortunately, you cannot pair this headphone with the iPhone and through the stereo bluetooth transmitter at the same time. This means that if you want to use it for phone calls, you have to unplug the dongle from the iPhone and turn on the bluetooth in the iPhone and then connect the headset to the phone. However, most people will just have this plugged into their iPod, iTouch, etc and will enjoy the awesome portability that can be attained in a world of no wires. Battery charging takes about 2.5 hours, with a red/pink LED for charging, and a blue flashing LED while its synchronized. Battery life is about 11 hours for continuous music play back, and 100 hours continuous communication/100 hours idle. Supported Bluetooth 2.0 profiles include: A2DP, AVRCP, HFP (1.0), and HSP (Ver. 1.1).
SonyStyle Atlanta had the DR-BT21IK/B on sale for $99, a price I haven’t seen advertised anywhere else.
* – I will write a seperate post about my SonyStyle Atlanta visit soon. I have big ideas and hopefully can work with SonyStyle closer soon.
Here are some more pictures:
