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Wednesday June 24, 2009
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 The Motorola HX1 could raise the standard for noise cancellation on a Bluetooth headset. As we've reported before, the HX1 uses a bone-conduction microphone in severely noisy areas to extract your voice straight from your skull, thus eliminating noise. The special bone mic is the little nub on the right hand side of the in-ear piece shown at left.
I got a demo of the HX1 at a Motorola event today, and it was impressive and a little weird. With "stealth mode" turned off, the HX1 is still a very good Bluetooth headset, much like the Motorola H780. With "stealth mode" turned on, calls don't sound any different to the person actually wearing the HX1. But for the person on the other end of the call, the HX1 wearer's voice suddenly gets muddier and is surrounded by total silence - at least in the demo, noise completely went away. It was tough to gauge the decline in voice quality in bone-conduction mode, though it was definitely noticeable.
I'm interested to try the HX1 to see if the tradeoff between noise cancellation and voice quality is good enough to make this headset usable in extreme cirumstances. We may be getting one at PC Mag Labs within the next few weeks.
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June 26, 2009 1:49 PM
Looks great, can't wait to get my hands on one. The Jawbone Prime was my first target, but this one might beat it as the "special" microphone is inside the ear, where as the one of the jawbone has to touch your face.
July 25, 2009 3:10 AM
I want one. Too bad it lost the soft-spring from Invisio, as it kept the device securely in the ear without any on-ear hook. This enabled the wearer to use glasses/sunglasses without any discomfort. Perfect for secret service agents, for whom this technology originated.
September 30, 2009 11:39 AM
This looks superb! Does anybody know what the sound quality is like on this headset compared to the aliph jawbone?