If you love everything about your expensive wired headphones except having to have them tied to your phone then FAVI Entertainment may have a solution for you.
“Turn your world wireless with the Clip Bluetooth headphone adapter. Sounds like your still connected. Designed for Beats by Dre, Skull Candy, Audio Technica, Sony, Bose, Shure, AKG, apple earbuds or any other wired headphone or earbud. Clip wireless headphone adapter turns your beats headphones wireless Turn your world wireless with this audio adapter that allows you to stream music to virtually any home receiver, speaker or headphones. This adapter allows you to turn your car speakers or even connect your phone to your home receiver wirelessly.”
The audio+ clip is a small, light, rechargeable adapter that will effectively convert anything with a 3.5mm connector into a Bluetooth 3.0 device. In the box we have the clip itself, a micro USB charging cable, a set of ear buds and a quick start guide. The device is made of light glossy plastic which doesn’t give a premium impression, and in fact the review unit developed a fault inside of 10 days of use and now refuses to charge.
The unit is small and very light and you probably won’t notice it clipped to your clothing. The front of the clip has a small hole for the mic and a large chrome power button with a small embedded LED which glows red when charging, blue when charged, flashes red and blue while pairing and flashes blue while successfully paired. At the back is the clip with a NFC tag on it. Volume controls are on one edge, with the 3.5mm audio and micro USB charging sockets on another.
Pairing was really simple by holding down the power button for 5 seconds and then using your Bluetooth settings to scan for new devices. If your phone has NFC then it’s even easier – just hold the sticker on the clip to the induction area for 5 seconds and when prompted select “Connect”.
A short press of the power button will pause or resume the music or answer a call / hang up. Short pressing the volume buttons adjust the volume while long pressing skips to the next or previous song.
Once paired you plug your headphones into the clip rather than directly into your phone and then you can stash your phone in your pocket or bag, and attach the clip wherever is convenient (preferably close to your mouth if you’re going to use it to make calls).
Clipped to my clothing and paired to the phone in my pocket the audio+ performance was excellent. I couldn’t detect any difference in audio quality between this wireless and a direct wired connection, and there were no drop-outs while walking unlike some Bluetooth headsets (although drop-outs did occur when listening in a different room or at a distance from the phone). The mic quality was also really good with no issues being heard during calls.
The large front button is easy to locate and press while attached to your clothing – I’d say a little too easy to press. I had a few occasions when the button got pressed by accident – for instance I couldn’t keep it clipped to my waist as every time I bent over the button would get held down. The battery also drained a couple of times when I had the clip in my pocket and the device accidentally switched on.
FAVI boasts a 1-2 hour charge time, 5.5 hour battery life for playback and a 15 day standby time. During my tests this proved fairly typical of the device’s actual performance. When battery is low the device interrupts your audio every 20 seconds with a series of 4 warning tones – a little irritating when you’re just trying to squeeze that extra few minutes of listening into your walk.
Having the power LED within the button means you need to be careful holding the device when turning it on/off or else you’ll obscure it with your thumb. Doing so makes it difficult to know what’s going on – especially without any headphones connected as you miss the audio confirmation tones.
On first inspection the included ear buds looked quite nice until I plugged them in for a listen. The sound was very muddy and lacked any bass reminiscent of something from a dollar store / pound shop. If you’re thinking of buying this adapter then you’ll have your own headphones or speakers in mind anyway. The included ear buds might be useful for giving the adapter a quick test but nothing more. Thankfully their audio quality didn’t reflect on the adapter itself.
As the FAVI audio+ clip still requires a cable, it unfortunately isn’t quite as convenient as an integrated set of Bluetooth headphones. However it does successfully convert wired earphones into a Bluetooth headset without any noticeable degradation of audio quality (to a non-audiophile like me) and it also allows you to make calls with them. Likewise if you have a speaker, home stereo or car stereo that can connect to the clip via a 3.5mm audio cable then you’ll love being able to play your tunes without having your phone attached.
The FAVI audio+ clip is available direct from FAVI Entertainment in the US for $59.99 or for £39.50 from Amazon UK. I guess for the money you could buy a perfectly serviceable Bluetooth headset or at least a decent deposit towards a really good set. However if you already own a pair of nice wired headphones or you want to connect to a wired speaker system then this is a great option. It’s currently also available from Amazon US for just $29.99 at the moment which is a great value.
For more details check out the link below to the FAVI Entertainment website…
