Motorola S9 / Cardo S-2 Owners

Looking for feedback, these are the 2 bluetooth headphones I am looking to get for athletic use, to pair with my phone.

I was pretty dead set on the S9's because they are made just for that reason, however just last night before I hit the buy button I read 2 different reviews on comfort issues and glasses.

People were saying they dont work with glasses well at all, and several other reviews say they just dont fit well for some people. I plan to go bike riding and my sunglasses are possibly the most important piece of gear I wear. So any comments on this?

Same for the Cardo S-2's they are the other ones I am looking at, a reviewer said he was able to wear his glasses fine with them but I have seen several reviews saying sound quality is bad and so is losing signal a problem. I am hoping these are isolated issues and thus looking for more feedback from owners.

I am also open to any suggestions for other bluetooth headphones to use.

 

I have the S9 and at first I had similar issues. I then changed to the other included ear pieces and the comfort improved dramatically. If you shades have thin ear hooks like some Oakleys, there is no problem. If they are thick you may have a comfort problem. In either case it will take a little getting used to but I love mine.

 

One thing to keep in mind with the S9's is that they say they are water/sweat proof, but that is not holding up in reality. If you work up a good sweat when you workout, these will eventually fail.

I am on my 2nd set, right now, and after seeing the problems that I was getting (where the volume and next track buttons stop working), I did some searches. Apparently this is a consistent issue.

Motorola won't address/acknowledge the issue, only does an RMA to return them if they are still in their warranty period. Other than that, they work great, and sound pretty good, as well, but if I have to replace them every other month, that is just too much of a hassle, IMO.

 

Thanks guys (nice avatar DTrump I am the one that made that, but your first one to use it) The cardo's look really great and I love the track change you just spin the headphone side piece. I am just worried about sound quality.

I want to try to find a place that lets me get hands on with the s9's and that will let me know how they fit.

 

I have the Cardo S-2 for a couple of weeks now, I have to say I'm fairly satisfied with it.

Pros:
- Sound quality is really good for bluetooth (I've never owned another bluetooth headphone before so be forewarn).

- Plenty of media buttons (make sure your bluetooth chip supports AVRCP bluetooth profile to take advantage of it) , most blue tooth headphones just comes with vol. up/down. However, turning the dial to fast forward/rewind may sound cool, but it's SLIGHTLY less convenient than a button. Not a deal breaker whatsoever.

- Battery life is good from what I can tell.

Cons:
- Each time you play a sound when there's no sound source present already, there's a notable annoying "click" (headphones goes from standby to full mode on I think). I suppose this is normal (I'm not sure) for wireless headphones. For example, if you play a youtube video, you would hear a "click" at the beginning when the audio source is being fed. Play another youtube video and you'll hear another "click" at the beginning.
If you're playing songs in winamp, there's no "click" at the beginning of each song if you skip tracks (the sound source is never turned off), just at the beginning. Basically, you'll hear a "click" if you play a sound when there's no sound. Sorry, my explanation sounds complicated.

- There's a very subtle background noise (I think this is expected for wireless headphones). It's very discrete and you might not even hear it. You won't even notice it after playing some sounds, you can only hear when playing an audio source with silent parts (there's no background noise you're not playing at all because it goes into "stand by" mode). It's more obvious when turning it off.

- The rubber ear rest gets uncomfortable after a while. It's not that big of a deal, just readjust it and it's fine for a little while. I just wasn't expecting that from the reviews.

- No indication of batter time/power left (probably no/not many bluetooth headphones have this feature anyways).



I wouldn't recommend it for athletic use. I'm interested in the Motorola S9 for the touch sensitive button (the wheel on the Cardo S-2 kind of slow you down)

 

Well if you end up with the S9's you would be the perfect person to give a good opinion on witch one is better so be sure to let me know.

I will probably go with the S9's because they are cheaper and more readily available but I am still looking for other options.

Oh by the way, all those issues you stated are not normal for bluetooth, I have plantronics pulsars for non athletic listening and it has no pop/crack noise, and no hissing in the background.

 

From the reviews, I hear the Motorola S9 short circuit a lot from your sweat when working out. Frankly, I don't any headphones would be good for working out let alone wireless ones.

 

I just bought Cardo S-2 for my Dell XPS M1330 laptop. It appeared to successfully pair to Dell's built-in 355 bluetooth card according to S-2 flashing led's, acknowledgement beeps and Vista 32-bit bluetooth pairing setup messages, but the headphones make no sound whatsoever. The laptop speakers never automute. Three hours on the phone with Dell support did not help. I did hear one clear chime in the headphones doing a hardware test with a simpler Cardo cell phone headset configuration.

I think it's a Dell/Vista 32 driver or stack issue with stereo headphones.

 

There is a problem with "autoswitching" between devices, as I have the same problem. In your system tray, right click on the volume icon, and select Playback devices. Your bluetooth headset should show up there, but the built-in speakers will probably still be the default device.

Select the bluetooth device, and push the Set Default button at the bottom. Close the dialog box, and refresh any windows that are doing playback (IE, Firefox, etc).

This worked for me, and it has been a pain in the rear. Hopefully they can do a fix for this in the near future.

Here's an online article on it:
http://www.technipages.com/bluetooth-audio-device-doesnt-work-with-vista.html

And the MS KB article, as well:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933144/en-us

Good luck!