A Closer Look
The first observation that I had about the Pulse was the finish. The glossy orange finish is super smooth and superb. The Pulse is also very light in weight and minimalistic in size and shape making it extremely portable; however the construction is definitely solid and made with high quality materials. The foam padding all around is thick enough to remain comfortable even after long listening sessions The earpads are not overly large yet are adequate and comfortable even on my larger ears. The arms of the headset can even be rotated ninety degrees to allow for compact storage.
Just in case you were wondering, the Pulse does have height adjustment as well. The right earpiece is home to all of the headset’s controls. On the rear side of the arm resides the power and volume buttons. On the bottom side of the arm resides a Mini USB port for charging the headset as well as the LED indicator and 3.5mm audio jack for old-school connectivity. The front side of the arm is home to the buttons for media skipping, stopping, and playback functions and also contains a hidden microphone for communication. Finally, the large button with a phone symbol on the outside of the right earpiece is used to answer or end phone calls if they happen to come in whilst you are singing along to your favorite tunes.
Performance
Pairing the device per the user manual is really straight forward; just be sure to enable Bluetooth on your device accordingly. Connections were made flawlessly with both our Galaxy S III and Apple 5C Smartphones.
The sound and microphone quality for this headset is pretty impressive for routine day to day service. With some equalizer tweaking on our devices the highs were crisp and the mid range was solid, with the low end absolutely Pulse-ating my eardrums. The low end depth is something I have found lacking in almost every Bluetooth headset that I have reviewed in the last year. Not with the Pulse though! This headset will definately enhance your mobile experience, whether it be with music, gaming, or movies, or just communicating during phone conversations.
The range is also impressive, even through walls, as we had no trouble playing music in a separate office adjacent to the room containing our phones. We experienced zero glitches or hiccups, such as stuttering or static, during our testing period. Antec used quality components to assemble this headset as evident of our test findings.
Battery life is also excellent, thanks to the rechargeable lithium-ion battery. Antec promises up to 8 hours of non-stop playback and has delivered a product that lived up to that expectation during our testing! Recharging the headset from complete discharge only took a couple of hours, similar to our smart phones.
When our test phone call came in (to a nice custom chime), all we had to do to answer the call was to press the large and conveniently located dial button on the right ear piece. The Pulse then automatically paused our music playback and answered the call for us. The conversation that took place was loud and clear with no distortion and our other party had no trouble hearing our voice through the internal microphone. This is a wonderful feature that other headsets have trouble perfecting.
And there we have it readers, a solid offering from A.M.P.! Let us go over some points and final thoughts in the conclusion of our review.
