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Areas for Improvement

While the I-Phono works good, its a first generation product, and I think there's a few ways in which succeeding products could be improved upon.

1) First would be battery conservation. The unit can run for 6-8 hours on a charge, which is AWESOME, but if left alone it will run itself dry. I found this to be a constant problem during late night testing - I might nod off to sleep and wake to find the whole unit out of power. To be fair it'd be hard for Bluetake to know WHEN to apply some sort of "sleep" mode to the I-Phono in this case, but let's take another example: Sometimes after some gaming I am tired and lazy enough to just hop into bed and sleep. My audio is off, my PC goes to sleep mode, but the I-Phono, if left ON, will drain its batteries. Turning off the power on teh headset is ok, but crawling under my desk to turn off the dongle too becomes a minor nuissance that I grumbled about. Why not build in some sort of signal detection into the headset, so that it turns itself off after 30 mins of lack of signal? And on the dongle: a detection to turn itself off after 30 minutes not detecting any VOLUME through its connector? Those would be GREAT additions.

2) Size. These babies are pretty nice looking, but they are just too large for a guy to wear around without being a little self concious. Since these are techno toys they ought to be more compact. The ear pieces need to be thinner and smaller. I'm sure that future generations will do this, so I am very hopeful.

3) Allow the dongle to be used and charged simultaenously. I found that, MOST of the time at home I was using the dongle with a device that was near a wall plug, or else could supply USB based power. However, Bluetake recommends you do NOT charge and use the donble simultaneously for reasons of the batteries being better used when fully charged and discharged in full cycles. When I did try to plug the dongle in to the power AND listen to the I-Phono, the music became a lot more noisy: there was an electrical hum or interference added to the signal sent to the headphones.

4) A carrying pouch. This is a minor quibble - but since my portable players all have pouches and so do several of the headphones I've bought, this would make sense. It'd be a nice bonus anyway :)

Conclusion

Reviewing the I-Phono was like reviewing a much needed pillow. I found the quality of the audio to be lacking compared to some speakers I've used, but I can't get past the FREEDOM that they provide compared to regular corded headphones. I'm not one to sit still 100% of the time when enjoying myself at home. I might be playing a game and yet take frequent trips to the nearby kitchen to grab some refreshments. Or I might be listening to music and need to just streth my legs. 15 to 20 feet isn't a huge range, but its enough that you will DEFINITELY notice the increased convenience of using cordless headphones versus something corded - yes even a corded headphone with an extension cable.

The big problem with this product is in the price. For an MSRP of $249 US I could easily get a fairly high quality set of corded headphones. Even for the added freedom that the I-PHONO adds, I think many people will find it tough to swallow such an expensive purchase. Hopefully, as the popularity of this product increases, its price will decrease.

If you think the money isn't a huge issue, and you're in need of a cordless headphones, the I-PHONO aims to please. I suspect that a lot of gamers will find this to be a very handy fragging companion indeed.

8/10