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Hands on with the Invisio G5 – trying not to lose the smallest Bluetooth headset in the world

InvisioG5

They sent me a new Invisio G5 Bluetooth Headset to look at a week or so back and I’ve been stuffing it in my ear ever since. It’s billed as the smallest and lightest headset in the world, and at 3.3cm long and a trifling 6 grams, who’s going to argue. I have a bit of a long standing ‘thing’ with the Nextlink folk, ever since two of their supposedly awesome Bluespoon headsets failed to work for me out of the box a few years ago, so it’s good to report that this product works fine. In fact I’d say it’s a pretty cool piece of technology all round (although there are a few things which make this genre of super-small headset a little less awesome than the advertising would have us think).

G5package

First impressions. Nicely packaged with a reasonable user manual, very tidy power cable, charging station and a spare rubber earpiece. The manual comes in 35 languages including ancient Aramaic (we jest!) and covers all the basics, which to be fair is not much. After all what do you need to know? Plug it in and charge it for 8 hours first, stick the rubber earpiece on at the right angle for the side of your head you’re using and pair it up with the phone handset. That’s just about it really. Oh, and you press the button once to answer a call, and once again to end the call. Job done.

G5small1

In Use. The device is surprisingly easy to fit into your ear, once you get used to the funny little rubber ‘spring’ thing. You’re supposed to cut the spring down to the right length for your ear, but I haven’t bothered yet. No doubt that should make it an even easier and more comfortable fit, so it’s probably worth doing. Once in, the unit is again surprisingly comfortable, even though you don’t have any soft padded foam cushions for the ear or such. The light weight means you don’t feel it pulling your head to one side like my clunky old Jabra unit, and while I wouldn’t want to sleep with the thing on, it certainly seems to be fine for extended wear. So relax, you can look like a real dork walking around your local supermarket with one of these stuck in your face.

G5andearspring2

The real test of the pudding of course is how it handles calls, and again it seems fine. The voice quality varies quite significantly with the positioning of the unit in your ear, so you may need to fiddle a little until you get the right sound, but once there it’s cool and dandy. The one drawback with devices of this size however, is the fact that trying to do any volume adjustment or other clever function with the buttons (there are two vol buttons on the side as well as the large answer/end button on top) is not that easy. Trying to avoid moving the headset while simultaneously pushing buttons to increase or decrease volume is tricky, you’re always one cm away from ripping the thing from your ear. Which is obviously not a good thing.

G5andearspring

That said, the operation of most of the functions are pretty simple to master, and mostly revolves around pushing and holding one or other button for a set period of seconds (e.g. 3 seconds on both volume buttons mutes the call).

G5chargingstation2

The real innovation of the product is the clever little cigarette box sized charging station which contains a battery to keep your headset charged while on the road without needing the power cable. It’s a great feature as it protects the device as well as improving the talk and standby time by a significant amount. The specs say that the standby time extends to 30 days (with 20 hours talk) with this box, so it’s a real winner. Again the whole thing is easy to use, just slot the headset into the case and snap the lid shut. The case will then start charging the headset automatically with a quick 10 second show of the LED lights to prove that it’s all working as it should. Nice.

G5chargingstation3

G5chargingstation4

Conclusion. Yeah, it’s actually a nice product. You can tell that the company has learned from the past and thought about the design in a bunch of small ways as well as major things like the portable charging case. Its ear friendly form factor, ease of use and flexible power charging mark it out as a bit different in a world full of ho-hum headsets. The use of a standard mini USB port on the charger indicates that you may be able to charge the unit from a generic laptop cable, however there’s nothing in the manual to confirm or deny this. It would also be useful to know whether the unit should be stored permanently in the charging case even when you’re not using it, or will that reduce the efficiency of the battery? Despite these small queries the headset deserves to be taken seriously, even without the usual marketing ‘smallest’ ‘lightest’ flim-flam. Now all I’ve got to do is avoid losing it down the back of the couch.

 Specifications Talk Time Up to 4 hours / 20 hours with Protective Charging Case Standby time Up to 150 hours / 30 days with Protective Charging Case Weight 6 grams Dimension 3.3×1.6 cm (1.3×0.63 in) Bluetooth®Profiles Headset and Hands-free User Interface 3-Button Wearing Style In-ear with Soft Spring. Price – £79.99.

7 Comments

  • Can you show a picture of it in your ear? I can’t figure out how it would work. Where does that spring thing fit? There are no photos on the Invisio site either.

  • Dang! That charging box thingy is a beauty!

  • You can charge the charger with your laptop.

  • Thanks CGA. And can you happily leave the headset in the charger all the time when you’re not using it?

  • Red, I took this quote from their website:
    “With the INVISIO® G5 Protective Charging Case there is no need to be close to any power supply for a long time. It recharges the headset each time you place it in the case, which means INVISIO® G5 provides up to 20 hours of talk time and 30 days of stand by time! So while not in use, you can protect and charge the headset at the same time. The Protective Charging Case has a sleek fashionable, contemporary design with a soft-touch black rubber finish.”

    It seems to indicate you can store it in the charger

  • yeah it also doesn't charge up half the time from the box, the contact pins wont stay connected, and if this company would have done any kinda have half-a**ed testing they would have found that, good luck tho getting ur money back

  • I thought I was losing my mind! I charged the litte bast**** for 3 days and still can't get the thing charged. I have figured everything else out and it is pretty comfortable, but I can't speak on the clarity since I can't charge it! Dang it.

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