Can you hear me now?

In many states, Johnny Law now requires you to use a headset while driving and talking on your mobile phone. Since we love not being run down by distracted drivers, Mac|Life heartily supports these laws. Unfortunately, most of us leave our Bluetooth headsets in the car most of the time, so it’s not uncommon for our headset to die while we’re on an important call to the Psychic Hotline. Will I be rich? Should be I be afraid of brown dogs? These questions would have been answered if our headset battery hadn’t conked out on us mid-call.

Iqua’s BHS-603 Sun solar powered headset is an idea so ingenious, yet so simple, you’ll smack yourself for not thinking of it first. You charge the headset when you first open it and then just leave it anywhere ambient light is available. It doesn’t even have to be sunlight. We tested the headset for a few weeks—even when left powered on, the Sun never seems to lose its charge.

Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The sound quality is below average for a headset in this price range. Car noise or walking outside on a windy day with the headset left us asking callers to speak up and repeat themselves.

The headset comes with two rubber ear attachments. The first felt like we were cramming a ginormous stick into our ear. The second was extremely comfortable, although we still used the included hook to keep the earpiece from falling off.

Pairing the headset or mastering its three buttons was painless. The main button takes care of all the major functions (on, off, answer, hang up, and so on) and two volume buttons were easy to find while on calls.

The Sun is a genius idea hampered by sub-par audio quality

COMPANY: Iqua
CONTACT: www.iqua.com
PRICE: $99.99
REQUIREMENTS: reqs
Bluetooth-enabled phone
Below-average audio quality