Plantronics favours vocal flavour with new headset 'Savor'

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 14 July 2011 13:25

Your IT - Mobility

With today's Bluetooth headsets A2DP, DSP, noise-cancelling and multi-pair enabled, you need to do something different to stand out, with Plantronics doing just that with its latest Savor M1100 Bluetooth headset!

Plantronics is well known for its audio technologies, having even had its headset technologies used on the moon during the US moon missions.

While future moon missions sadly seem some time off, with the US Shuttle program effective now over (despite the last shuttle still being in space as I type), Plantronics has done the opposite, and has grown tremendously instead.

From a range of business oriented communications solutions through to highly fashionable consumer Bluetooth headsets, Plantronics has, like its competitors, sought to bring new features and new designs to market on a regular basis.

However, once you've made your Bluetooth headset small and light, once you've added in DSP, noise-cancelling tech and more - what the heck do you do next?

Plantronics' answer is to try and make the hardware buttons on its headset even simpler and easier, to give a solid four hours of battery life without needing any additional battery packs or clips, to add a third microphone for additional noise-cancellation in particularly noisy or windy situations, to offer a design that continues moving away from some 'boxier' competitors, with more details on these features on page two.

However one of the big new features is a voice command cloud-based service called 'Vocalyst' that lets users send email, listen to text messages and reminders, listen to news, sport, finance updates, update your Facebook, Twitter and more - all by using your voice.

While the new 'Vocalyst' service is a major feature of the Plantronics Savor M1100 headset, the Savor operates perfectly normally without it, leaving the take-up of the service to the end-user should they wish to try it, with one-year of 'basic' Vocalyst service included free-of-charge, and with the opportunity to 'upgrade' to a Vocalyst Pro service offering even more voice commands and controls for US $35.00 per year or US $3.50 per month.

I've had the M1100 for less than 24 hours, having set up the Vocalyst service last night, and trying it again this morning. The service works as advertised, although as with any voice control or recognition system, sometimes the computer on the other end can struggle with understanding exactly what it is you're telling it, especially if there's noise about.

However, I definitely have not used the Vocalyst service enough, as yet, to say with any accuracy how accurate it is in a range of environments, but I have heard the 'electronic woman' who I've set to speak in a UK accent tell me that she didn't understand what I said and to try again a few times.

I have succeeded in getting the service to read me my emails from Gmail, to read out news headlines, sports updates and weather updates, and I have even just sent an email by voice, although I did need to say 'send an email' a few times before the system picked up that I wanted to 'send an email'.

I haven't tried the 'reminders' system yet, but am looking forward to doing so, and to trying out the 'Vocalyst Pro' features as well in the not-too-distant future.

Thus, the system has indeed worked for me, sometimes on the first go, other times after a few tries, but I do want to test it further before giving any final verdicts on Vocalyst one way or the other.

So, what does Plantronics say about its latest and greatest? Please read on to page two!