The Plantronics CS50 Headset
Plantronics is based in my home-town of Santa Cruz, CA. They make some fine, professional-quality headsets.
Today, I popped into an Office Depot and picked up the CS50, which is a wireless headset designed for desk phones in offices. The base unit of the headset daisy-chains into the telephone handset. My Polycom actually has a seperate jack for headsets, which I opted to use instead.
The headset itself is a lightweight device that clips onto your ear or can be used in a standard “over the head” fashion. This is a far cry from the large over-the-head wireless headset model I used from Hello Direct 8 years ago. Plantronics includes a number of ear clips and over the head clips so you can choose what works best for you. The headset also operates in the 900mhz spectrum, which is a welcome bonus. 900mhz gives better range and won’t interfere with my bluetooth or WiFi.
The problem with wireless headsets that attach to desk phones is that you need to walk back to the desk in order to start, end, or dial a telephone call. The CS50 has an optional “headset lifter” that will lift and lower the handset of your desk phone, allowing you to at least answer the phone and hang up without returning to your phone. The unit I had included this attachment, though I haven’t opted to use it yet.
One thing, though, is this headset is expensive. It was $300 in the major office supply chains. You can probably froogle and get a cheaper price, though it’s still about $200 even mail order. Even so, this device is geared for those office PBX-type phones, which are also that expensive. Corded headset systems for those kinds of phones are at least $100 if not more.
