Let me start by saying that as of this moment the Sennheiser MB 660 UC is my new favorite headset. Let me explain..

At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking that this is predominantly a music headphone. The absence of a boom microphone is what concerned me as soon as I started unpacking this beauty. I was expecting the MB 660 UC to pickup all the surrounding office sounds as it attempts to find my voice. This was not the case. Not even close!

It was actually quite the opposite. Not only was the MB 660 UC able to find my voice clearly, BUT it was able to filter out all other office sounds so effectively that callers were unable to hear me typing away on my keyboard (I tend to strike the keyboard in a less elegant fashion than most). I have a fairly loud neighbor to my desk (hello Travis) and in my daily Skype for Business calls he is often heard over my voice, despite my best efforts.

That’s no longer the case..

A good headset in my opinion needs to be comfortable, must have great music quality and needs superb conversation audio too. A decent battery life is appreciated and of course if it looks cool and doesn’t fall apart after rigorous use then I am happy.

The MB 660 UC stands above the rest with the use of an adaptive ANC (Active Noise Controller), *SpeakFocus  and  Advanced Own-Voice-Detector. Collectively these innovative technologies are the reasons why this headset is a superbly awesome device. The use of these 3 innovative technologies contribute to the removal of ambient noise while focusing attention to the speaker. Since ambient noise can vary, an adaptive ANC is particularly effective in adjusting to the ever changing ambient noise. Its a lot more technical than that, but you get the idea. Also all ANC claims are not equal, I tend to trust my ears and not the brochures.

The Plantronics Voyager UC has been my go to device in the office because of being wireless and fairly good at ANC. I have also used the Jabra EVOLVE 80 at my home office, primarily because of it being a lot better when it comes to ANC, filters out my squawking cockatiel to some extent but mostly creates a quite space for me to work in.

Don’t get me wrong, BOTH these headsets are really good. However, what has been missing (IMHO) is a device that is a hybrid of these two products. The Sennheiser MB 660 UC does that well.

What I liked:-

• Touch Pad Controls – really cool to interface to functionality via touch pad
• very comfortable – despite wearing it all day
• no boom, I tend to snack at my desk and the boom can get in the way. Pushing the boom up on other headsets works but I do often forget to bring it down again
• NFC pairing
• Audio cable with answer button (2.5mm and 3.5mm jack plugs) and in-flight adapter
• Battery time is great at 30 hours
• Battery run down? No problem, switch over to cable mode
• The 3 “braille” like dots on the left hand side of the headset – get left and right correct in the dark. You don’t want to put this puppy on back to front, cause the boom will be projecting to the back of your head 😉

* SpeakFocus and Advanced Own-Voice-Detector are unique to Sennheiser

Areas for improvement:

• Although the touchpad is really cool, I found that at times I either accidentally disconnected a call or placed the headset on mute.
• The mute function doesn’t place the Skype for Business call on mute, just the headset, this can be confusing
• Love the idea of no boom, however it comes with a slight degradation in transmitting audio
• Would like to see more obvious indication of left and right, you can get these on back to front quite easily if you not paying attention
• The MB 660 doesn’t pair correctly 100% of the time to my PC, every now and then I have to turn it off and on again before it connects properly
• The reception range isn’t quite as impressive as my Plantronics Voyager UC

References

https://en-nz.sennheiser.com/wireless-headset-office-phone-mb-660-uc

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