Jabra tries to minimize wires for listening to music and making calls.

Music and phone calls. Headphones and headsets. Phones and MP3 players. It ought to be easy to get them to work together, so that you can play music on whatever device you want and make phone calls without having to pull off your headphones. In practice, multiple devices and multiple Bluetooth profiles make this a complicated business, but Jabra is trying to simplify things with two combination headphones and headsets: the BT620s neckband headphones and the BT325s stereo headset (plus the A120s adapter to add Bluetooth to any MP3 player). Is it really possible to get convenience and music quality too?

Jabra BT325s - Only One Wire

Jabra BT325s; the headphones that think they're a headset.

At first glance these look like standard in-ear headphones, or a full-size mobile headset complete with cables, but they're actually a mix of both. Plug the BT325s into an MP3 player and you've got headphones. They're white to match an iPod, the thick grey rubber edges make them more comfortable than most, and the sound is quite reasonable, but that's not why you'd buy them. The chunky white clip in the middle of the cable is a Bluetooth headset that you can pair with your mobile phone. When a call comes in, your music is automatically muted, and you can answer the call by pressing the button on the headset. Then you talk into the microphone on the clip, change the call volume if needed, and hang up and go back to your music when the call is completed.

There are limits, of course; you can't pause your music or control your music player in any way, because you're only connected via the headphone socket. On the plus side, the music doesn't play over Bluetooth, so you don't need an adapter for your music player, and you're not getting rid of your headphone cables, but you're not adding an extra wire for a headset either.

Jabra offers a good pairing experience with mobile phones, and the headset controls are large and easy to find, but the headset isn't heavy. Depending on your phone, you'll be able to answer or reject calls, hang up, use voice dialling and last number redial, hear when you have another call waiting and switch between calls. The internal battery gives you up to eight hours of call time, and you can still use the headphones for music even when the battery runs out (if you can't be bothered to plug the headphones in directly). There's a power adapter in the box or you can charge over USB from a PC if you want to leave the adapter at home (although it's a smaller-than-usual USB connector).

This is a neat solution to the problem of answering the phone without taking off your headphones and fumbling for the pause control. What we particularly like is the fact that the headphones are detachable, so you can plug in your favourite pair instead. We tested this with Shure E500s and didn't notice any loss of quality from going through the Jabra headset, so you're still getting the music you're used to, but with a little added convenience.