Nokia BH-905 - noise cancellation stereo Bluetooth headset
Published by Rafe Blandford at 10:51 UTC, June 2nd 2009
Nokia today announced the BH-905, a high end stereo Bluetooth headset with active noise cancellation. The headset has a 'band-over-the head' with ear-muffs' form factor with music, volume and calling controls on the two ear pieces. The headset has ten microphones; two for capturing speech and eight for capturing sound for the active noise cancellation functionality. The headset can be connected via Bluetooth or a wired 3.5mm connection with adaptors for 2.5mm, 6.5mm and airplane connectors included in the box.
The BH-905 will be available from August from around 285 Euro (street price of around £300).
From the Nokia release:
The Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-905 with active noise cancellation combines two in one – both music and calls – and provides crystal clear sound by eliminating background noise with novel active noise cancellation technology from Wolfson Microelectronics, a leader in high performance audio technology. This multi-microphone feed-forward active noise cancellation technology allows for pure sound without ambient noise and is now introduced for the first time in the Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-905.
“The overall music experience with this new headset is second to none thanks to the revolutionary noise cancellation technology. The headset is set apart also through the ability to make phone calls, as switching between music and calls has been made easy with integrated call control”, said Jarno Piironen, Director, Entertainment Business Area, Nokia Original Accessories. “People living in urban areas are surrounded by noise practically everywhere and silence has almost become a luxury. We believe this headset fulfills the highest standards for providing high quality music enjoyment and phone calls and also give the luxury of silence when needing an environment to relax.”
Key specifications
- Focus on your music or calls with active noise cancellation technology and superior audio quality with advanced digital signal processing (DSP).
- Operating keys: multifunction key for power on/off, answer/end, voice dial, and redial, volume up, volume down, play/pause, next track, previous track, and active noise cancelling on/off.
- 3.5 mm Nokia AV connector with supporting adapters for: 2.5 mm Nokia AV connector, standard 3.5 mm jack, standard 6.3 mm jack, and standard airplane jack.
- Stereo Bluetooth support with A2DP and AVRCP profiles. 10 metre range.
- Speaker impedance: 32 ohm
- Speaker drivers: 32 mm high performance drivers
- Number of noise cancelling microphones: 8; and 2 additional microphones capturing speech and advanced digital signal processing (DSP) for clear communication.
- Active noise cancellation technology: Reduces up to 99% background noise
- 180 mm x 155 mm x 59 mm dimensions and 175g in weight.
- Battery lifetime (600 mAh battery with 2 hour recharge cycle):
Wired Wired with n.c. Bluetooth Bluetooth with n.c. Talk Unlimited - 24 h 15 h Music Unlimited 40 h 25 h 16 h
More information is available on the Nokia website, on Nokia's press bulletin site and on the BH-905's press page.
Video
In the video, embedded below via Nokia Conversations, Jouni Knuuttila, an audio specialist at Nokia, says that 'in the multi-microphone technology, we are the technology leader' and that Nokia are 'the first company, in the world, to bring this to consumers'. The video below concludes with the statement that, 'we believe this is the best headset ever made'.
Categories: Hardware, Links of Interest, Editorial Thoughts
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition, S60 5th Edition
News Discussion
But being high end this may be of interest to people reading the site. Always trying new things to see what works. That's why we'll write about generic service (e.g. iPlayer) or web services etc etc.
And yes a bit pricey for my liking... Not surprising given technology etc. I imagine the margin of accessories remains very healthy!
Unregistered - sure we'll mention third party accessories too, as we have done in the past. Making judgments about what to include in the news stream is never easy (its a fine balance sometimes) - that's from a purely informational view. It can also depend on how much other news is around, whether we have a good piece of unique editorial etc. too. And there's the human element too. We do think about this stuff, but very happy to listen to feedback from anyone.
Obviously some things can make it easier (e.g. if a company gets in touch with information etc.), but that's more about having a more complete information to make a judgment on. One part of AAS's audience is high end elite users who want the best of everything (either because it is the best or for status reasons) - they would probably be interested to hear about the BH-905, but not the Nokia 6730 we mentioned last week.
@ 'Malerocks' & 'Unregistered' (02-06-2009 11:58 AM) - I've not seen another noise canceling headset, let alone a noise canceling headphone set that use 8 microphones to balance out noise...
Surely something unique as this (even if they are from Nokia) is news worthy?
But if we see Rafe rockin' the streets in a new pair of BH-905's...
The Nokia has a better universal formfactor and a cable can be used to save battery-life (?!) .
:) Regards jApi NL
The Jawbone product isn't even close to the BH-905's... They don't cancel incoming sound, they just separate your speech from background noise.
The Nokia BH-904's do that for E65; so who's making the profit now...?