Sony Ericsson HBH-GV435 Review

Overall Rating

Ergonomic design making it comfortable to wear for long periods. Good battery life offering long talk and standby time.

Very bad static in ear piece speaker, this occurs when a a person at the other end speaks and is very annoying. Headset switches off without any warning despite a full charge. Person at the other end cannot hear me clearly and has difficulty following what I am saying. Voice activated dialing is not very good and I have to speak very loud in order for it to work. Sony Ericsson claim they are using DSP technology. What DSP? No sign of it in the headset. A poor headset compared to my HBH-300

Have had this for a few days only and I have already stopped using it and will be returning it for a refund. The headset is very poor quality and a poor effort by Sony Ericsson (SE) to replace their flagship HBH-300 which is an excellent product. Having used nothing but SE headsets, I am disappointed with the HBH-GV435. I bought it for the design as it suits me when wearing for long periods of time. Other than the battery life, there is not very much I can praise this headset for.

I read some excellent reviews on the HBH-GV435 prompting me to buy it. But I have seen many complaints from other owners similar to mine. The ear piece is of poor quality, every ring tone or word spoken by the person you are calling is strewn with static and crackles. The person at the other end hears my voice as muffled and cannot make out what I am saying. I have to speak loudly in order for the person to make out what I am saying. So I don't know what kind of DSP technology SE have used in this headset, but they need to look at what made their previous products so great and re-use the same formula. The unit has switched off by itself for no reason even though there was a full charge. For voice activated dialing, I have to speak loud in order for it to work. Although the HBH-GV435 uses bluetooth V2.0, its range is very limited. Walk more than an arms length away from the handset and the voice to the person at the other end starts fading. I have even paired the headset to another handset and the same problem persists. As an experiment, I would call a friend on my HBH-GV435, speak for a few minutes and then quickly call them back/or transfer over using my HBH-300 and all the problems with the former would disappear when using the latter.

I have rung SE and they have told me that I have a defective product. However having read some online reviews of other users, I am inclined to believe that SE have produced a bad product or have missed their QA on a particular production batch