I’ve been looking for a long time to buy Bluetooth stereo headphones for the workouts in the gym – I got tired of having to deal cords that would get tangled up during the workouts or would become a mess in the gym bag. When Motorola MOTOROKR S9 Bluetooth Stereo Headphones came out I jumped at the opportunity to buy them since they were the first stereo Bluetooth headset with a form factor that is appropriate for wearing in public. (Most of the other ones are too big and just scream “Look at me, I am a dork!”) Unfortunately, those headphones had several limitations, the worst one of which is that they are not waterproof and after about a year of use they almost inevitably stop working. I had gone through three pairs of them thus far – I would have loved if I could buy alternate headphones, but in terms of features and the look these are still some of the best on the market. I have finally decided to upgrade to the slightly more expensive (and newer) S9-HD model and since I bought them a few weeks ago, I have been extremely satisfied with them – for the most part. Here are a few pros and cons that I have come up with.

Pros:

1. Comfortable enough for a daily workout. Even with my moderately large head, I did not have much of a comfort issue with wearing them every day for a couple of hours. I would not recommend wearing them for more than three hours in a row though. But that would be the case with most headphones anyways.
2. Easy setup. I had no problem connecting them to either my cell phone/mp3 player or my laptop.
3. Decent range. As long as there is an uninterrupted line of sight between the linking device and the headset, you can use them on the other side of a large room or a smaller gym. Comes in handy when working out and don’t want anything attached to any part of your body.
4. Decent music playback sound. This is one of the more noticeable areas of improvement over S9.
5. Decent battery life. For a relatively small device like this one, it was pleasing to find out that it did not have to be recharged more than a couple of times a week with standard use.
6. As a phone earpiece it is useful to have around the head headset because it improves stability a lot. All of my other earpieces fall out of my ears way too easily.
7. Being transferred from the mp3 player to the phone when receiving an incoming call is really useful and cool. This works with iPhone as well.
8. Improved and raised control buttons. They are much more accessible and not easily pushed by accident – this had been one of S9’s weaknesses.
9. Much improved earpieces – they are very comfortable and easier on your ears.
10. The part of the headphones that touches your head is heavily rubberized. I hope this also means that these headphones are waterproof, or at least less likely to break down than S9.

Cons:

1. It would be really useful if these headphones were collapsible. In that case they could be taken with you in your pocket almost anywhere you go. Plus, it would avoid dangers of having them twisted while stored in your bag.
2. The stereo feature works only for music. When using them for calling, only the left earpiece delivers sound, which is sort of weird. This takes some time to get used to.
3. For some reason, when I linked them to my laptop, they got de-linked with my cell-phone. I had to go through the whole process again to have them back in the desired configuration.
4. When using it with iPhone, the track-skipping buttons don’t work.
5. When using it with iPhone, the headphones don’t work with all applications. This turned out to be annoying and inconvenient when I tried using them with Skype.