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Saturday, January 8, 2011

Wireless headphones for voice recognition

I've broken a few headsets for voice recognition lately. The other night another set of headphones broke. The metal end sprung out of the earpiece toward my right eye. Luckily I was wearing glasses so I wasn't injured but I decided in the interest of safety I better cough up the money for another pair.

I ordered the USB wireless Plantronics audio 995 headset after I saw that it was available online for half the original price, around $50. I haven't had much luck with Bluetooth headphones and I need a wireless setup because my laptop is too heavy to lift when no one's around so I'm dictating at a distance.

I received the headphones, charged them up via the micro USB cord, put the USB dongle in, then turned the power on the headphones. They paired immediately and I didn't have to download any drivers manually on my Vista laptop. When I opened Dragon Naturally Speaking, I scored a 22 without even adjusting volume level so I was pretty pleased with that. So far they've performed very well with voice recognition.

I was curious about how they would work with music so I turned on Pandora. The audio is much better than I expected.

The only downside to these headphones is that you can't use them while they're charging. However they didn't take long to charge and I've been using them about six hours without any decrease in function so as long as I schedule charging them up, that should work.

So if anyone's looking for a set of wireless headphones for voice-recognition that are affordable I'd recommend these.

2 comments:

Carl Thompson said...

Good to hear - I love Dragon.

Anonymous said...

I will definitely look into these. I have had problems with my headset's sound quality that ends up making Dragon a chore to use. I should really buy a better headset!