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Provides: Bluetooth Headset
Developer: Countour
Minimum Requirements: Bluetooth compatible cell phone
Price: $79.95
Availability: Now

What do you get when you take a stick of gum, an Apple bluetooth headset and a piece of brushed aluminum and throw it in a blender? The Contour Metal Bluetooth headset, of course. It’s a super thin, in-ear Bluetooth headset that has enough style to consider itself worthy of use with the iPhone.

The first thing you’ll notice about this headset is just how thin it really is. It’s about the size of two pieces of Trident gum lined up. It’s so small that there is barely room for anything. I’m still trying to figure out where they hid the battery. You can tell it isn’t made by Apple, though. They somehow managed to put three buttons on this, which is enough to make Steve Jobs’ blood boil.

Now, you might worry that the headset sacrifices reception quality and battery life for thinness. Thankfully, this isn’t the case. I didn’t have issues with either of these, so no worries. One tip though, when you charge the headset, make sure it’s inserted into the adapter as far as it can go. Sometimes it hits a stopping point on the way in, and it seems like it’s all the way inserted, but it won’t charge unless you push it a little further. Not a big deal, but helpful to know.

Along with the headset, you get a USB adapter for your car, the USB cable that charges it, and a nifty little clip to carry the headset around in. The clip also houses the adapter that allows you to charge the headset over USB, which brings me to my first annoyance.

This headset had the potential to be my favorite headset ever, until I saw how it charges. Now, there’s nothing wrong with how it charges, I just hate adapters. To charge, you have to plug the headset into the adapter, which is very small, and plug that into a USB port. But this made me wonder, who’s idea was this adapter? Here’s how this could have been brilliant. The tip of the Metal headset is ever so slightly wider than a standard USB connector. How awesome would it have been if you could just stick the headset directly into a USB port to charge it? Then, the only way you could ever lose the ability to charge it would be by losing the whole darn thing.

The second minor annoyance is the buttons. They are too small. Thankfully, you’ll likely never need more than the Talk button after you’ve set up your preferred volume level. If you like to change the volume on your headset often, then I hope you have even tinier fingers than I, otherwise you’ll be killing conversations like zombies in the coming apocalypse. Since they flank the Answer/Hangup button, it’s easy to hit that instead of the volume buttons. I circumvented the problem entirely by setting the volume with the iPhone. Then someone reminded me that there are phones other than the iPhone. I know, big surprise to me, too. So anyway, someone out there might be forced into actually using the volume buttons; though, for them, I worry not.

Overall, this is a great headset. It sits inside of your ear, so there isn’t much need for the included ear clips. You can bang your head and throw up the horns, or whatever it is the kids do these day, and not worry about it falling out. It’s the only headset that I’ve tried to date that may just replace my Apple Bluetooth headset. This would have been my favorite headset ever if it charged over USB by plugging the headset directly in ie USB key style (without an adapter). Even still, this headset is years better than the vast majority of clunky hunks of plastic available today.