icombi iPod bluetooth headphones

icombi iPod bluetooth headphones

Wires are great, they carry our telephone calls, power our gadgets and connect our iPod to it's headphones. Well that was before the iCombi. The iCombi is a bluetooth transmitter (AP11H) and a set of bluetooth headphones. The idea being that you can ditch those tangle-prone iPod headphones and listen to your iPod wirelessly via the magic of bluetooth technology.

Set your iPod free

The iCombi will work with any iPod with a remote connector. Just connect the bluetooth dongle (the transmitter/receiver) to your remote input on the iPod. Turn on your headphones and you can listen to your favourite music wirelessly. It really is a lot of fun. The behind the neck headphones are reasonably light and I found them to be comfortable. The range seems to be about 10 - 20 feet in my flat, but for me the iCombi is an excellent way to listen to music on my bicycle without the pesky white headphones getting tangled up in my gears.

So, now I can keep my iPod out of sight in my backpack or in a coat pocket. No leads are visible and neither is my iPod. This new found wireless freedom is incredibly exciting and a lot of fun.

How does the iCombi sound?

Sound quality is a lot better than I expected. Occasionally I got a small glitch in use; where the signal would stop for less than a second. 99 percent of the time it worked flawlessly. These are open-backed headphones and seem as loud as the standard Apple buds. There is a little loss of quality, I wouldn't like to master my recordings using them but I think most people would be more than happy with these sonically. They sound fine with my music collection anyway. Die hard HiFi geeks may prefer a set of wired phones like the top of the range Sennheisers, but for me, these iCombi phones do the job; and this ever-so-slight loss in definition is more than made up for by the freedom they provide.

Fun for all the family

One of the fun parts of the iCombi is letting your friends and family have a go! If they are not used to over the neck phones, they will normally try and fit them over their head - made me laugh anyway! Everyone that tried the headphones liked them and wouldn't give them back.

Wireless iPod controls too!

Not only does the iCombi provide a wireless transmitter, but the headphones have forward, back, play, pause and volume buttons. So you can skip tracks, rewind etc. without touching your iPod. I found the skip and volume buttons a little fiddly at first, but now I don't have a problem using them. The device also does not restrict access to the iPod lock button, so it can be locked or unlocked in use - which is good if you want to leave your ipod out of sight in your backpack.

Will it kill my battery?

My iPod is over two years old and the battery is not as good as it was. Even so, I got 3.5 hours of continual use out of my iPod before the battery gave up. I was amazed I got that long out of my iPod. The headset will last for 11 hours and are rechargeable via the charger supplied and also via usb if you prefer from your computer. The iPod dongle is powered from the iPod's battery.

Is the iCombi for you?

It's quite an expensive device, but the freedom it offers is exceptional. I think it's only a matter of time before Apple build-in bluetooth to their iPods. The iCombi will set your remote control jack equipped iPod free. That freedom doesn't come cheap, but then again nor do iPods..