Quality of bluetooth headsets as microphone

Question

I'm thinking about getting a bluetooth headset to use primarily as computer microphone. Question is: do they typically have good quality compared to traditional wireless microphones (or classic wired mics)? Are they good enough for speech recognition software? I don't need top quality, just something decent.

Also: can the battery hold a 2-hour recording session?

Answer 1

I have a Plantronics Calisto B70 Bluetooth headset that came with Dragon Naturally Speaking (Amazon.com: Dragon NaturallySpeaking Premium 11 Bluetooth).

If I try using sound recorder, I can hear some crackling noise as well as my voice, so I don't think the quality is great.

One time, I was able to get it working 99% accurately with DNS, but since then I haven't been able to repeat that accuracy.

The headset is worse in Windows Speech Recognition, perhaps because it isn't tuned for Bluetooth like DNS is.

For what it's worth, I tried doing a sound recording using a couple other pairs of analog wired headphones, and there was noise present on those too, so I'm thinking wired USB headphones would be the best, but can't confirm that.

UPDATE

I just bought the Plantronics 625 USB headset.

Training Dragon Naturally Speaking seems to be working better than with the B70 Bluetooth.

I also tried recording my voice as a way to compare them. The B70 sounds OK, but has a small amount of hiss in the background and has a lower range of frequencies. The 625 sounds much clearer and more natural.

Here's the recordings if you'd like to compare for yourself.

• USB
• Bluetooth

You could also have a look at the Dragon Naturally Speaking Hardware Compatibility List.

Answer 2

They won't have as good quality as normal mics since the audio data is compressed before transmission. They are, however, generally good enough for speech recognition. Two hours might be a bit too long for the cheaper ones, but it certainly is doable.