Can Jawbone's Stylish New Era Convince You to Wear a Bluetooth Headset?
The Bluetooth headset has an image problem. It’s associated primarily with loudmouth jerks in Jos A. Bank suits, and pedestrians who appear to be shouting to themselves.
The electronics company Jawbone realizes this, and it is attempting to push back against this cliche with its newest release: A new version to its Era Bluetooth headset, which shrinks the gizmo down in size and adds some style, color and high-tech noise control features to make it more palatable to us non-suit-wearers, who may be a bit apprehensive about appearing in public with a dongle in our ear.
The Jawbone era, with charging case. The Era gets 4 hours of talk time without a charge, Jawbone says.
The new Era is 42 percent smaller than the previous generation of Jawbone’s Bluetooth headsets, and though it still sticks out from your ear — Jawbone hasn’t figured out a way to completely hide it away quite yet — it is smaller than most competing models. The Era comes with Jawbone’s “Noise Assassin” technology, which Jawbone says can simultaneously sense and eliminate noise around you so that your voice goes through clearly, and also automatically raise the volume in your ear so that you can hear.
Interestingly, Jawbone appears to be betting that wearers will want to interact with smartphone voice assistants like Siri and Google Now. Because Siri talks back to you, you can now bark out directions to the assistant and, hypothetically, operate several different apps on your phone using just your voice. On the top of the Era headset, there’s a physical button that you can program with the Jawbone app to interact with your phone: One of the most prominent options is the ability launch Siri by tapping the button.
Because Siri talks back to you — and because you can talk to Siri through the headset — you could instruct Siri to write a text message, and Siri would read the text back to you and ask to send. Or, you could ask for walking directions, and Siri would read them into your ear.
The new version of the Era (right) reduces the size of the Bluetooth headset by 42 percent.
Of course, this function is available on many sets of headphones, too — including Apple’s white earbuds — which are arguably more socially acceptable to wear in public than is a Bluetooth headset, and which have badly damaged the Bluetooth headset’s viability. But a Jawbone spokesperson said that when you’re wearing headphones, you isolate yourself, sending a message to the world that you don’t want to be bothered; whereas with a Bluetooth headset, you seem more available and approachable, and you have freer range of motions without the tangle of cords.
The Era will come in four colors: Black, red, silver and bronze and will cost $100, or $130 with a small charging case that adds 10 hours of battery life. You can order your own today at Jawbone’s website or at Verizon; in a week, the Era will be available at Apple stores, AT&T and Best Buy.
Yahoo Tech is a brand new tech site from David Pogue and an all-star team of writers. Follow us on Facebook for all the latest.
