In the past 18 months that I’ve had my Treo 650 smartphone, I have been pretty conservative about accessories. I have only really used my old Ericsson HBH-600 Bluetooth Headset, and the original wired headset that came with my Treo 650. I listen to a lot of podcasts during the day, especially during commutes and traffic jams. The Treo wired headset was actually very useful for that – I could listen to a podcast and easily incoming answer calls.

This worked well, up until a few months ago. This is what my headset looks like now :

Original Treo smartphone headset

It looks fine, but upon closer inspection, we find :

Treo headset chewed by a cat

The headset wire has been well-chewed by a certain kitten who I shall not name at this time. Suffice to say, with this original headset, I can listen to podcasts, but callers could not hear me speak through it.

Palm’s 2-in-1 stereo headset for the Treo costs US$29.99, which was more than what I wished to pay for. So off to eBay I went, and soon I found a compatible headset – an OEM Hybrid Stereo Headset that works with the Treo 650 and the newer Treo 700 series. It cost me only US$6.99, and worldwide shipping was an additional $9.99. It arrived within a week.

Treo stereo headphones

Being a stereo headset, it comes with both left and right earbuds. There is a microphone and a lapel clip. To answer calls, all you need to do is press a button on the microphone. There’s even a volume control. Sound quality is good – for podcasts and phone calls, I didn’t notice any difference in quality compared to the original headset. However for music, the difference is simply night and day – of course in stereo it sounds much better! In fact as I type this blog post, I am listening to Prince on my Treo.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the quality and price of this OEM headset. The eBay member I bought it from is called malcolmwireless, and I would certainly recommend buying from him (I have no relationship other than being a satisfied customer).

—

Filed under: Accessories

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!