Poly - Voyager Focus 2 Wireless Noise Cancelling On-Ear Headset with Charge Stand - Black

Summary: - Pros: Great wireless headset that has excellent sound quality on both ends (reception and transmission). Outstanding battery life. Very comfortable. Amazing range. And easy-to-use/intuitive app with very useful settings. I would absolutely recommend this product! - What could be better: The auto-pause music when taking the headset off didn't reliably work for me. Same for the auto-mute when talking to someone. Hearing your own voice through the headset was very strange / a bit annoying to me at first. Luckily, there is a "Sidetone" setting that can be set to low and that fixed it. Details: - The headset looks great and they are very comfortable! I was wondering whether I'd be able to use them most of the day and I was happily surprised they didn't bother me at all. Sometimes I would take them off for a bit when my ears get a bit hot. To be clear, I did not feel they made my ears super hot, but as it's natural, surrounding your ears with anything would eventually make them feel a bit hot. - The most important aspect of any headset is the sound quality when listening and talking and this is where the headset shines! Music sounds great and everyone I talked to said they could listen to me perfectly whether I was using my phone or during virtual meetings (using Microsoft Teams). - Pairing with my iPhone and with my laptop was a snap, as I would expect from a high-quality device. For the laptop, the instructions highly recommend using the included BT700 Bluetooth adapter instead of the laptop's built-in Bluetooth. However, I'm happy to report that using the adapter or the built-in bluetooth work flawlessly! The documentation says that using the sound is much better using the BT700 bluetooth adapter as well as it gives a greater range (up to a whooping 50 meters / 164 feet). I didn't test it that far, but while my laptop was on the second floor, I could listen to music without any issues or glitches while I was on the first floor. Same when I was in a phone call and I'd leave my phone on a different floor. The connection never dropped. - Amazing battery life! Documentation says it can have up 16hrs to 19hrs of talk time and 24hrs to 40hrs of listening time depending on whether the Noice Cancellation is turned on or off. All I can say is that I used it for 3 days straight working remotely, on and off in video calls and listening to music, and I haven't had to charge them. This takes away the anxiety of running out of battery during an important call. - Ease-of-use app: -- Intuitive app with very useful settings and easy-to-understand names and explanations -- When pairing to my iPhone for the first time, it gave me a link to download the app. That makes it so much easier to "want" to install it as I was hesitant to try to find the app and install it. -- The app does Not ask you to create an account which is very welcome. It gets installed in a snap, and it immediately connects to the headset. If you have the headset on, you can experience any changes you make to the settings instantaneously -- The app includes a “Find my headset” feature. At first, I was not sure in practice how much I’d use it given that the phone has to be connected via Bluetooth to the headset for this feature to work. That means that if you forget the headset somewhere where Bluetooth is out of range like in the car, at a cafeteria, hotel room, etc, that feature won’t work. However, I quickly realized that given it's a wireless headset that I was using most of the day, it was easy for me to walk around my house (where I work remotely) and take them off in various places while eating or doing anything else. Having this "Find my headset" feature is a welcome addition as it would make the headset beep/sound making it much easier to find when misplaced. - Useful headset buttons! I really like the sensory approach and layout of all buttons. You get a nice feedback when touching the center of the headphone to play/pause/answer a call. The volume up and volume down have a tiny "+" and "-" notch allowing you to know where to press without looking. Mute and noise cancellation buttons are easy to find without looking. - Cons / Could be better: -- For a better call experience, I found that Noise Canceling must be ON when talking. Otherwise, you can hear your own voice, faintly, but to me it’s a bit annoying/uncomfortable. This is true even when the “Sidetone” setting is set to “Low” in the app (setting it higher than that is even more annoying as you can even hear your breathing if you breath somewhat hard). Therefore, I know leave Noise Canceling all the way up/on and that solves the issue. -- Auto-Pause Music not always pauses the music when taking the headphones off. I thought I might be doing something wrong because sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn't. I gave up trying as that feature is not as important to me. -- Auto-Mute when taking the headset off did not work reliably for me. If I take them off and they're in my hand or put them away, then it would absolutely work. However, if I would just let the headset sit around my neck, it would only sometimes auto-mute. The good thing is that there are 2 other easy ways to manually mute: there is a mute button that can be pressed or you can swing the microphone boom up. -- Active Noise Cancelation (ACN) doesn’t work as I would expect. Even when it’s totally off, I can barely hear the noises/conversations around me. This can be a good thing for some/most. In my case, I sometimes like to hear a bit what’s happening around me. I had hoped that turning it off would accomplish this but that’s not the case.

This is an outstanding wireless communications headset if you're a remote worker or you work at the office. As an employee that works in a hybrid environment, I've been able to put this headset through its paces at the office and at home. From start to finish, this has been a seamless experience. Setup was a breeze and worked right out of the box with the included USB bluetooth dongle. Plantronics also thoughtfully included a USB-C adapter to use with the bluetooth USB-A dongle in case you have no available standard USB-A ports on your computer. The construction and build quality of both the headset and the charging stand feel very premium. I love that Plantronics used a rigid aluminum outer headband to add to its durability. Just by holding it you can tell that this thing will take years of abuse. The retractable inner headband and ear cups are made of a very soft and plush memory foam material that makes it extremely comfortable to wear. These are easily the most comfortable productivity headphones I've ever used; perfect for those long meetings! Over the last several days, I've used this headset a lot in Zoom and Team meetings. I can happily report that in both applications the headset was instantly recognized as the default audio option when checking the audio settings. There really wasn't anything else for me to do other than start using it! I asked my co-workers for feedback on how I sounded during our group meetings and they all reported that I sounded clear. I've also had several one on one meetings with co-workers and they also reported that I sounded crystal clear when I asked for their feedback. The headset audio from others also sounds very clear on my end. Even when walking away about 15 to 20 feet, the call quality remained phenomenal. The active noise cancelling on this headset is fantastic. You get two different levels of ANC in case you want to allow a small amount of background audio to bleed in a bit just in case you want to remain somewhat attentive to your surroundings. I also love the short and unobtrusive flip-up mic boom with its built-in mute button (you can also rotate the mic boom upwards to mute or take the headset off). Not only is the short boom mic more aesthetically pleasing, but I love not having a long stem that extends to the lips which can easily become cumbersome throughout the day. Lastly, the on the fly buttons located on the outer earcups are convenient and easy to use for things like lowering or raising the volume or activating Siri/Google Assistant if you're using this with your mobile. This is easily one of the most premium headset offerings that you can get for the office. Its performance so far definitely lives up to it's name. However, there were a couple of minor improvements that I would have liked to have seen. Micro USB is such an antiquated standard at this point. I would have really liked to have seen this include a USB-C charging port on the headset instead of Micro USB. Also, instead of only having the option to plug in a USB bluetooth dongle when using this with your computer, I would have loved to have seen the USB bluetooth functionality built right into the charging stand. Since you already have to plug in the charging stand via a USB cable to your computer anyway, it would be nice not having to plug in an additional USB dongle if the headset will primarly be used in a stationary fashion (but still include the USB dongle just in case you want to take the headset on the go and don't want to carry the charging stand with you). Other than these minor gripes, I don't have much else to complain about. Overall, this has been a very premium productivity headset experience that has resulted in zero call quality issues so far. I also can't stress enough how comfortable this headset is. If you're a heavy productivity worker that is constantly in meetings, you will love this headset!

I like testing headsets. I have quite a few that I use for various things. I have my earbuds, my airplane noise cancelling, my fitness buds, and my gaming headset, which I’ve been using for a work headset. This hasn’t worked because no one wants to show off a blinged out RGB headset in a work meeting no matter whether you can turn them off. Besides, they’re huge and I was looking for something wireless. I’ve tried a few work headsets in the $150 range and they’ve all been fairly disappointing. Honestly, my other headsets are over $300, so I thought trying out these Poly/Plantronics/HP Voyager Focus 2 UC headphones would be a good fit. I have to say, I love them, except for two things that really tick me off (I’ll mention them at the end). Noise cancellation… meaning getting rid of the noise on the microphone side so your client or team can’t hear your screaming kid in the same room… that’s pretty darn good on this headset. I was surprised that on my test call with my wife she couldn’t hear our son screaming bloody murder for his next snack. I feel very confident with them in a meeting and now will use them while watching our kid and on a biz meeting at the same time. Go Poly! These are fairly easy to set up, just like a Bluetooth headset with BT5.1 because they ARE a BT5.1 headset. The stand is fairly slick and allows for charging whenever the headset is sitting in it. It’s a pretty slick device because it sticks the charging pads into a receptacle on the right headphone that’s normally hidden during wear. Pretty slick, and a great idea, because that is also how it stands on the the charging stand. The other end of the charging stand is USB A and no charger is included. It also includes a BT USB A transmitter that works as plug-n-play on any modern windows or Mac system. In order to be in Teams certified mode, you need to use the included dongle. Sound quality is excellent for speech and web meetings. I was really surprised at the quality considering the price. I tried music as well, but I honestly prefer my airplane headset as those completely cover the ear. And that’s the first thing that ticks me off about this set of headphones. When I’m wearing glasses, they really pressed the stems of them into my head and that’s pretty ouch. I don’t have that problem with any of the other headsets I have, including the ones that are totally over ear. These are on ear and so press against your ears. Some people like that because it doesn’t at all obscure your face. YMMV. The major thing that ticks me off about this headset is the connection that is on the headset. It’s MICRO B! Come on. This is 2022 and to release a set of headphones with USB MICRO B is kind of dumb. This will keep me from taking them on a plane because I honestly don’t carry any MicroB cables anymore. I, along with the rest of the tech forward world, have moved on to USB C charging everything. Poly is nice enough to include a travel bag with these headphones but I can’t imaging taking them with me primarily because of this. It might seem chintzy to you, but I just can’t go back to that. I’ve had too many broken USB MICRO B devices at the port or cable over the years and yeah… it’s too fragile for my taste. I just don’t understand why they would ruin such a great set of headphones by bolting on 8 years ago’s technology to it in such an important place. They claim USB C compatibility, but the included A to C adapter DOES NOT CUT IT. Overall, this is a solid set of headphones that could work well for a road warrior too if you don’t have the anti-USB Micro B sentiment that I do. Unfortunately, it’s a deal breaker for me.