The Plantronics Discovery 975 carries the legacy of its ‘925’ predecessor, being one of the least ugly Bluetooth headsets you’ll find. Its slim boom mic extends almost elegantly from the squircle-shaped body of the earpiece, with soft-gel ear tips on the underside firmly and comfortably fixing the headset to the ear without probing into the ear canal.
Call quality from the 975 matches the high standard set by the 925, but is enhanced by the inclusion of Plantronics’ AudioIQ2 noise cancellation. This couples digital signal processing to a pair of microphones that, according to the company, “precisely captures the user’s voice and simultaneously cancels background noise”. And, conveniently, noise cancelling automatically engages on all outgoing calls – there’s no need to activate it by pushing any buttons on the headset.
Call quality is advanced further by what the company describes as “three layers of WindSmart technology”. This involves grooved vents on the boom and acoustic fabrics surrounding the microphones, plus electronic filters within the AudioIQ2 technology to remove wind noise.
With comfort, design and sound quality boxes ticked, the Discovery 975 needs only to work for longer and be easier to use in order to comprehensively best the 925.
It achieves the former by dint of a new rechargeable carrying case that triples talk time to 15 hours, according to Plantronics. In a nice touch, an LCD on the carry case displays the charge level of its integrated battery as well as the earpiece. There’s also a Bluetooth indicator, which lets you know when you’ve moved out of range of your phone and are, consequently, talking to dead air.
The charge pack and carrying case for the Plantronics Discovery 975.
The Discovery 975 doesn’t earn a perfect report card, however, with the buttons controlling on/off, volume, call answer/end/reject, etc still incredibly tiny and closely spaced.
The Plantronics Discovery 975 costs $180.
Should be.