Sennheiser MB Pro 2 UC ML (506046) - Dual-Sided, Dual-Connectivity, Wireless Bluetooth Headset | For Desk/Mobile Phone & Softphone/PC Connection| w/ HD Sound & Major UC Platform Compatibility, Black

I purchased two competing Bluetooth headsets for my business, and this Sennheiser was one of them. I needed a primary unit, and a backup unit just in case (my consulting business demands very long telephone calls throughout the day). I chose Sennheiser being a long-time user of their products (forty years!) and a fan of their build and sound quality. The build quality of the MB Pro2 is excellent, just as you would expect from Sennheiser. Solidly constructed, yet light and easily worn, the MB Pro2 feels good on the head and comfortable on the ears. The headset just seems to fit naturally, a testament to Sennheisers design team. I REALLY appreciate the integrated charging stand, easily the best feature overall of this headset (keep reading). Pairing the MB Pro2 to both my Macs (running Yosemite) and my iPhone (iOS 8.1) was easy, and I was up and running in just a few minutes. In order to test the headset, I performed a Skype test call (you record for 10 seconds and Skype plays back your recording). I immediately noticed that the sound quality was good, but a little grainy (as is usual with Bluetooth headsets). Whether this is a result of the Bluetooth codec, the mic, or the earphones, I'm uncertain. But, strangely, the boom mic just didn't pick up my voice to the extent that I was expecting -- it sounded dim and slightly distant, even though the mic is literally 2 cm from my mouth. I adjusted the headset volume to its highest level, but no joy -- still the same dim and distant presence. I was able to compensate by talking a little louder, but my voice level is noticeably unnatural at that volume and it seems like I'm being verbally assertive. After about a half-hour of testing, including disconnecting and reconnecting via Bluetooth (to see how robust the connection capability is), I felt that I understood the headset and was ready to use it. To contrast, my other headset is a BlueParrott B350-XT in a very similar configuration, but with only one earpiece (and, sadly, no integrated charging stand). The BlueParrott is solidly constructed and feels good on the head, but -- in my limited subjective testing -- has better sound quality, and at a better recorded volume than the Sennheiser. I wasn't expecting this at all. I don't have to elevate my voice with the BlueParrott, and the sounds is slightly less grainy (more "fluid"?) than the Sennheiser. So, the bottom line is this: the Sennheiser MB Pro2 XL is a very good headset, with good quality sound and excellent design features (especially the integrated charging stand) and the welcome stereo ear cans; it is a core part of my daily work life and workflow. However, if I had to do it all over again, I'd probably elect to simply get a second BlueParrott B350-XL as a backup headset as the sound quality is subjectively better, even though it doesn't come with the nifty integrated charging stand and has only one earpiece. *** One-week Update *** Long story made short, I discovered that my headset was operating on a very old release of firmware (1.0.x). I was able to determine how to update the firmware from the Sennheiser site, and was able to get the firmware up to the current 1.1.x level. Both the questionable quality audio (slight raspiness) and the poor voice pickup on the mic are now history and calls are very clean in both directions. Now, the only complaint I have is that one of the headset ear cups rests on the base of the stand when the headset is mounted on its charging station. This may actually be an intentional design feature that stabilizes the headphones while being charged. My only concern is that the matte surface on the headphones may wear down over time by regularly scuffing the base of the stand. Not a big deal, but something to note. This is now my primary headset and it now works flawlessly. I've relegated the BlueParrott to my computer bag for travel. I'm raising my rating to a full five stars. I'm absolutely thrilled with this purchase. Note that the Sennheiser updater is a Windows-based program, so you'll need access to a Windows machine (such as a family member's or friend's system) or operating system instance (such as a Windows 7 virtual machine running on your Mac) in order to perform the update. Once the update procedure is complete, you'll be able to continue using your headset on your Mac, iPhone, etc. The updater is NOT required in order to use the headset on a Mac, iPhone, etc. *** Five-month Update *** This headset is absolutely rock-solid and performs flawlessly. I use this thing for 5-8 hours per day on a daily basis, and, frankly, couldn't imagine working without it. Absolutely no complaints at this point. It's comfortable and wears well. It is well designed and everything is "in its place". The boom is the perfect length and stays just out of the way. The headset has just the correct weight (not too heavy, not too light), and it has that intangible "feeling of quality". It behaves well via Bluetooth signaling (i.e. informs my iPhone that it has been picked up off the stand which then answers the call, etc.) Sound quality remains superb, and people tell me that my voice is crystal clear on the other end. The charging stand is a God-send and keeps the headset constantly charged without me having to think about it. This has been a fantastic purchase and one that I would do again in a heartbeat. I wish all products were as well developed and integrated as these 'phones. Reiterate: 5-stars. (P.S. And, no, I have no affiliation with Sennheiser whatsoever, other than the many decades that I've been a customer of theirs).

By far the best business-oriented wireless headset I have ever used (and I did use quite a few, wireless and wired ones). Here is a quick overview (after ~6 months of everyday business usage). PROS - Lightweight. Can stay on for a few hours w/o any discomfort - Great battery life. I use it every day (~1hr, sometimes more) and still only need to recharge once a week. - Great sound quality (both ways, mic and headset). - Room Presence is wonderful (I turned it on and after getting used to it, left on permanently). I really like it as it does make conversations more natural sounding. - Ability to connect both phone and computer at the same time is very convenient (as some meetings would not support computer-based audio so one has to dial-in) - Exceptional with iPhone 6 - Great Mac OS X compatibility (up to El Capitan 10.11.x; latest at the moment). - Great Microsoft Lync for Mac compatibility (to the point it even muted the mic when you join a Lync meeting or presenter has elected to mute all participants). Also works great with AT&T Connect (Mac) for those who use it. - Supplied USB dongle enables high quality of sound (voice) and is recognized by Mac OS X w/o any drivers CONS - Originally, I thought the price was high (I could not have imagined spending that much on a headset). Now, after 6 months I think it is very reasonable considering the overall features/performance. - Music quality sucks. Don't consider that you can use this headset for music; it is not designed for that. It's low frequency response is cut ~150Hz so lows do not exist here. Imagine Senheiser headphones with dark sound signature (subtle highs) but w/o lows? No, not for me. - (not really cons, just a note) One must use supplied USB dongle. While headset supports standard bluetooth profiles, if connected directly to Mac (no dongle), voice quality through Lync is terrible (occasional dropouts/cannot understand anything). This never happens through the supplied USB dongle. Overall, very happy with it and would definitely highly recommend it for business usage.

I'm a software engineer. Like a good mechanic years ago could tell you what was about to go wrong with your car just by listening to it, or like Rolls Royce can tell with sound and vibration sensors when an aircraft engine is going to fail, or like Uptake can predict when train locomotives are going to fail; I can usually tell when there are software bugs causing a problem. These have software issues with the digital signal processing, Bluetooth, or firmware. The bugs are intermittent, inconsistent, and no doubt difficult to reproduce, but the result is that people randomly can't hear you, you can't hear them or sound quality in either direction is poor. Also, the microphone noise canceling implementation is inconsistent. Mostly you drop out and people can't hear you. Interference you say? Nope, happens in the corn fields too, but even so, Bluetooth operating on the same 2.4Ghz spectrum as WiFi, and USB 3.0 operating at 2.4Ghz is a reality; it can and must be mitigated with software. How do I know? Because my Samsung Bluetooth ear buds don't have these problems. Bummer, I wanted this headset for years and finally purchased a pair. They feel great! Extremely nice physical quality and comfort. And nothing should be able to compete with a boom mike for noise canceling and speech clarity! ...but sadly Sennheiser, or Epos, or whatever they call themselves these days mismanages or mis-hires their firmware developers. I don't want to throw them in the trash, but I can't have clutter lying around in my house nor be dropping out in meetings at random moments. :(

--My context-- I'm not on the phone for a living, but I take 5 or 8 calls per day on this device. With a normal call being 5 or 8 minutes and a long call being 30 minutes to an hour. I work in standard office building that has a closed floor plan (offices with real walls, not cubes). --This headset is almost perfect-- -Battery life is as advertised, and it charges lighting fast when it does run out. -it's very comfortable, light & adjustable - parts and construction seem very sturdy - everyone can hear me clearly (mic is great) - the button for answering or ending calls is easy and intuitive to find without looking - the rocker switch for volume has too many functions and motions (it depresses awkwardly for muteing the mic), this overloading causes it to be a little clumsy/small to address. I'd much prefer to see a wheel for finer and faster tuning the volume, and a separate switch or button for mic muting (ideally put that on the mic itself) - the Bluetooth itself is pretty reliable. it seems to pick up my Bluetooth iPhone and connect 96% of the time (not bad, but not perfect). But when it doesn't pick up my iPhone Bluetooth, usually a single press of the call answer button picks it up right away. For me this reasonably fixes that 4% issue of not connecting. And to be fair, it's not clear if this issue is the phone or the headset. -The computer dongle connects on Bluetooth a bit more reliably than my phone. Can't recall ever having a connectivity issue there. -The software in the phone is awesome. It does a fantastic job of seamlessly working simultaneously with the computer dongle and the phone. There is nothing you need to do but answer calls or make calls and it just works - it's fast and seemless. Also, surprisingly there is a useful and pleasant voice that tells you things like "recharge headset" or "iPhone connected", etc. It turns out that voice is crutial and useful because there is no other way you'd know such things (no visual user interface). The voice software telling you status does a fantastic job, tells you the right things at the right time without being annoying. - the one thing that sucks, and the only reason I gave this 4 stars is ... the maximum earphone volume and isolation isn't good enough for crowded environments. The max volume on this device is about every other headsets medium volume. This is usually fine for me, but if I walk to a cafe to work, it is hard to hear the call... and to make it worse, it's easy to hear the ambient noise of the room (related but different issues). This is the number one thing Senheiser needs to fix. Give me better isolation in the headphone from ambient noise, and give me a volume notch for "eleven". I'll buy this again, right away, if they fix that issue. The last thing that doesn't suck, but it is only maybe 3 stars is range... I'd say the range is well less than advertised. After about 50 feet of distance there is a very noticeable and exponential decay in call quality. It's really only usable within less than 40 ft in my opinion. This isn't a deal breaker for me at all though. overall this is definitely still a must have if you like taking calls hands free in an office, and want that to work seemlessly for both phone and computer on one headset device.

The input sound is great, people hear me very clearly in the other end, and the noise cancellation is great. For the output, the sound is OK and seems a little muffled and not too loud but it's clear though. If you are listening for a speech (e.g. a movie) the voice is very clear. The room experience feature is nice, it really makes hearing less stressful and the best of it is that it makes you listen to your own voice to some extent in a way that you are aware of your voice level. The headset is pretty light and it's very small that i forget i'm wearing it for hours, I was looking for something light and small as big earpads on other headphones cause me troubles and uncomfortable. When wearing them i can hear voices around me but when listening to music it blocks sounds nicely. The build quality is premium and very elegant. The battery life is as advertised and the bluetooth range works great, connection works seamlessly and very stable, it automatically reconnects when in range. The dongle does not seem to work on linux (Fedora 28), I'm using an external dongle on my PC (Plugable Bluetooth Adapter) and it works fine. Works well with MacBook Pro 2017 too. If you are using this in PC and on a voice call it will automatically switch from A2DP High Fidelity Playback Profile to Headset Profile and degrade the output sound, but this is expected and that is a limitation of the bluetooth standard at the moment and not an issue with the headset itself. If you are on a voice call you shouldn't be listening to music anyways. The voice will still be clear as if you are on the phone. If you are buying this for gaming with voice i recommend you either get a separate microphone or look for a wireless (not bluetooth) headset or get a wired one. Overall, i'm very pleased with the headset and would certainly recommend. UPDATE: I tried the BTD 800 dongle again, it turns out that it works on linux just fine, it's detectable as an audio device.

I tried several head phones before landing on the Sennheiser. I wanted a device that was comfortable, with longer lasting batteries and especially one that would pair with both my laptop and cell. This one does the trick perfectly. It has great sound and noise cancellation. Others have commented on the high quality of my sound on Zoom. And it switches without any action on my part to in coming cell call if I simply tap answer on the phone. After the cell call it links back to the laptop (and if active) the Zoom call. It is easy to lock onto the charging stand and turns off when so mounted. One draw back, it does require the unique Sennheiser charging stand as there is no separate USB plug connection. An inconvenience as I travel and this requires me to unplug the stand and carry it along. But the stand does hold the headset in an upright position and it is very easy and quick to take the phones from the stand and put on with minimal effort.

Bought this hoping it would be a good replacement for the previous 'gaming headset' I had which was the size of an aircraft headset and was cheaply made. I wanted a headset that could switch-hit as a non-ridiculous business headset for conference calls when I'm working from home, and for gaming/voice comms. It does the former well enough I suppose, and it's neat that it can connect to phones and computers simultaneously, it will prioritize phone audio over PC audio by default, so calls that you answer will take precedence. The trouble is, apparently whatever flavor of the bluetooth protocol this things uses supports decent quality in stereo, OR, terrible quality in mono + microphone audio. What this means is that if you're playing a game of some sort, and you open up a voice chat program like Mumble, as soon as the app tries to access the headset mic, the audio quality will get crushed down to accommodate the microphone channel. At that point you can speak but any audio from the game will sound like it's coming through an analog telephone. Not cool at all. This is apparently the fault of the bluetooth spec, which is why most gaming headsets use their own 2.4Ghz RF implementations. However, professional RF headsets emphasize long range over quality and none are stereo. In short, you won't find a headset that is: -Small, professionally designed and of high quality -Gives high quality, stereo audio even when using the mic -Comes with a dock-style charging stand and doesn't look like it came out of a sci-fi movie I guess I should've known but I think that expecting customers to look up protocol specifications is a little outlandish. For the price, I think I'll be returning the headset and continuing my search. If you know a long range, solid, not ludicrously designed, on-ear wireless stereo headset with reasonable quality, I'll hug you to pieces.

While it worked great for number of weeks, I started to experience strange disconnects. It was not clear what was the reason. I used Sennheiser Updater to bring the headset firmware to the latest v1.3 (requires MS Windows) some time before, but disconnects would still happen on my primary laptop, MacBook Pro (Retina, 2015 model) with latest OSX El Captain and all updates installed. Contacted Sennheiser support, got the detailed answer on the same day with several advises, but nothing helped. Tried them all, also spend number of hours with Google to learn how to troubleshoot Bluetooth connections on OS X. Used Apple's Bluetooth Explorer and other tools. Figured out that disconnects happen in 'Handsfree (Headset)' mode only, not in 'Music / A2DP' mode. Contrary to support suggestions, did not see control messages on OS X side - the headset just gets frozen, no voice prompt (usually it says: something like "Call Ended" or "Phone One Disconnected"), does not respond to buttons. Meanwhile laptop "thinks" it is still connected - for some time. Takes 10-30 seconds, until I am able to switch it off and on, and reconnect. And then it might work great for another 10 or 30 minutes, but then it happens again. It happens both with build-in MacBook BT and Sennheiser provided BT dongle. While it works - it works great (mostly). The connection quality is excellent, no distortions. The sound quality is very good, noise suppression from microphone really works. This model does not support aptX codec, but it is not relevant for 'headset' mode anyway, however I got much better sound using aptX with another (much cheaper) Bluetooth headset on the same laptop. Again, it is not a decision factor for me. The headset is very lightweight. Battery life is great - using for hours easily. Since it comes with charging cradle, I never get down to empty battery. UPDATE (Apr 23, 2016) Tried all suggestions by Sennheiser friendly support without any success. What is next? The product comes with 2 year warranty. Sennheiser support provided prepaid UPS shipping label, I sent the headset with all accessories back to them. Waiting for Sennheiser to repair or suggest other options. UPDATE (May 1, 2016) Since I got used to BT headset, I decided not to get back to wired one. Purchased two Plantronics BT headsets - one in the same price range as MB Pro 2, another one - about twice cheaper. Was thinking to return any of them if either would not work. But.. both did work as expected, no disconnects - same laptop, same environment. Now, when I verified that problem is in MB Pro 2, contacted Sennheiser Support once again and asked for refund. BTW, while I can see they received the product number of days ago, I did not hear from them. UPDATE (May 23, 2016) Plantronics sent me back replacement product, which turned out to be "refurbished". I phoned them and asked for refund. They said they can not provide refund as I did not buy from them, so I requested new item. The nice lady said it is the warehouse policy to provide refurbished (if it is in stock) for replacements., but they can provide new in this case. Was asked to send back this one and write in notes to send me back a new item. On positive side - they provided free UPS label in both cases. LAST UPDATE After chat with Amazon rep, they made the exception and approved full refund - after I explained I purchased two other Bluetooth headsets (by Plantronics) to prove that the problem was with this headset. Generally both Sennheiser and Amazon provided great customer service.