Hands On With the Plantronics .Audio 476 USB Headset
For the past week, I’ve been reviewing a Plantronics .Audio 476 USB headset the company offered to loan me. Since I listen to music most of the day and also make heavy use of voice chatting on Google Talk and Skype, I’ve probably logged 40 hours with the headset already. It’s certified for Skype 4.0 super wideband voice and works quite well for chatting. The only issue I’ve had on that front is with our weekly podcast. Since the headset uses an open-ear design, I find some sound leaking out and captured by the microphone — you can blame me for any echo issues in our last podcast episode. ;)
That minor issue aside, I found this headset to perform admirably. For the price, music is a joy to listen to on the 476s — it uses 32mm drivers with a response range of 20Hz to 20kHz, so bass is quite nice. And Digital Signal Processing is built in to help with echo cancellation — that wouldn’t help with the podcast because of the method we use to record our tracks, but for general chatting, it works very well.
One area I find headphone-makers skimp on is in the length of cable, but that’s not the case here. Plantronics provides a full 2-meter cable from the headset to the USB 2.0 connector. Also handy is the inline remote for volume control and muting — that actually worked well on the podcast as I slurped coffee while muted. For traveling, the 476s fold up, but I’d like to see a small bag included with them – perhaps I’m spoiled by my old folding Plantronics headset that did have a travel bag.
The Plantronics .Audio 476 USB headset works with either a Microsoft Windows PC or a Mac OS X computer — no drivers are needed. The MSRP is $54.95, although I’m sure you can find them online for less. For general music enjoyment and voice chatting, I’m pretty impressed. If it weren’t for my specific podcasting requirements, I’d probably pick up a pair of these myself.
Kevin, response range specs on audio gear need to include “+/- X dB.” If they don’t, they’re essentially meaningless. The Plantronics 476 headset could be down 20 dB at 20 Hz, and in that case 20 Hz would be effectively absent in normal listening. The headset may be a good one, but you can ignore the specs.
Understood Rich, but if I don’t put the available specifications out there, people ask me what they are. Perhaps this better: decent bass sounds. ;)
As an audiophile, I can say reputable manufacturers will include a frequency response graph as part of those specs. Problem is, in this day and age, not too many people care to see that, and I’d say 999 out of 1000 won’t even know what a frequency response graph is, let alone understand one that’s shown to them. Short of a graph though, listing the numbers is the minimum I would look for in the product specs.
@ Kevin – it’s been a long time since you and James did a geek session video. Any chance we can see you guys back sometime soon?
Did you try them with your iPad? My camera connection kit isn’t here yet but it is supposed to work with a variety of headsets.
Nope, don’t have nor did I order a connection kit. My camera connection is the cloud via MiFi. ;)
I have been using a pair of these that Plantronics sent to our office. I’ve been having some issues with sound not coming through google voice after listening to music/videos, etc, via other sources. Did you ever run into any bugs with these? I’m on a Mac and I’m not sure if it’s a software issue specifically or not. The engineers at Plantronics are taking the stance that Google Voice is the issue so I’m trying to do some digging around before bringing it back to them.