Jawbone, take three

On Sunday I bought a Jawbone bluetooth headset. The audio quality is fantastic. The construction, not so much.

The first one broke during the first day, or was broken when I got it, I was so busy all day hard to tell. The power connector snaps over the end of the Jawbone, which I love, but that end is also a button (for pairing and toggling noise cancellation). Apparently its very fragile and you need to remove the charging cap “like a piece of celery and snap it in two” according to Jawbone support. If you wiggle it side to side, it’ll pull on the tabs that hold the end button on and potentially break them.

Oh well, fine. Really the audio quality is fantastic.

So I drive back to Apple this am and exchange it. They are out of black units on the shelf, so the employee goes back and finds one for me. He processes the return and sends me on my way with my new unit.

I get home and open the box – Something didn’t seem right, but whatever, I have a conference call and gotta work. After a couple of hours the headset is charged (You have to charge it fully before using it, according to the manual) and I get a call. I press the talk button – Nothing. Sigh. I reset it. Nothing. Talk button is DOA.

I call Jawbone support and they of course say this is unheard of, but whatever, return it. Alright, fine. Really the noise cancellation is worth it[1]. I drive back to the Apple store after lunch and hand the guy the second dead unit and receipts. He says “Did you pay for this one?” “I think so? The other guy asked if I wanted to keep it on the same card, handed me two receipts and off I went.”

I guess I got the second unit for free! Bummer it was dead. Heh. Alright, I get a third unit from the shelf and he has me buy this one, then return it, then exchange it for itself, just to keep the books straight. Fine.

I get back to the car and decide to charge it using my Griffin car charger and it hits me. This thing, like the first one is covered in tape. On the sides, on the top. Hard to get off tape if you don’t have fingernails like me. But the second unit, the one the guy got from the back, was not sealed. So apparently I had been given a previously returned unit.

So Jawbone is not doing very well in the quality of hardware area. Hopefully this one works.

[1] I will do a recording via the Jawbone and Macintosh once its charged to demo the unit. If it works that is.