Samsung HS3000 Clip-On Bluetooth Headset Review

Having many features in a headset doesn’t mean much if the sound quality and performance through real world use doesn’t match up to the marketing and ultimately the price. I find this a lot with audio output devices. Some tend to focus too strongly in one area and forget about another and in a way this headset provides, initially, a mixed bag of feelings when you connect the included earphones and begin playing back music. I realised what the problem was quickly though, as with bundled earphones that you get with almost all smartphones and mp3 players nowadays, the ones that come with the HS3000 were below average. They lacked detail and bass and the ear tips were all an uncomfortable fit, they were thin and the wall edges of the earphones themselves scratched against my ears causing irritation. I don’t have big or small ears either.

I connected up my own earphones though and what a difference. I played Ernie by Fat Freddy’s Drop, a track which has a good variation of bass and instrumentation and was hearing the lows rumble and highs sing which the bundled earphones could not come close to and instead muddy everything together – An ugly mess.

Having said that, while the stock earphones are poor for media, they are perfectly fine for taking voice calls. You don’t need high-end earphones for that purpose. It’s just not really on that a high bluetooth receiver like this is packaged together with earphones that cannot deliver sound quality that is even worthy of high street earphones costing £15.

For the remainder of the review comparing the 3 SoundAlive modes  I will be using a pair of VSonic GR07 MkII to judge the quality of the HS3000 because the included earphones simply do not release the full potential of what it is capable of. The modes provided different EQ presets, one offered maximum bass with slightly improved treble, the other has a good balance increase of all 3 levels, bass, mid and treble and the final mode lowered both mid and bass frequencies and gave priority to vocal higher frequencies, this mode worked well during calls as voices were easier to hear in noisy environments. It’s also an ideal mode when listening to audio books.

I found  it hard to tell which mode was active because the voice doesn’t state which mode you are in, it simply goes right to that mode. Needless to say the mode with increased bass felt like a good balance for music especially. I found there to be no distortion at high volumes from both Samsung Galaxy Note II and Note 3 with both devices set to maximum volume. Streamed music was clear and excellent in quality. There was still a noticeable difference to when I directly connected the earphones to the phones though and this appears to be because of the SoundAlive modes being used by the HS3000 changing the sound signature slightly based on the mode that’s active.

Sadly there is no way to turn SoundAlive off  so I was unable to truly test the wired vs wireless differences and doing so in its current form would be unfair as the HS3000 applies an EQ at all times. Needless to say, with no option to turn the modes off entirely, the sound is still rich and punchy. The buttons are easy to press but not easy enough to accidentally press. All playback controls worked perfectly in the stock music player as well as in 3rd party players such as PowerAmp (Android).

The battery charging times are also fast,  I found the HS3000 finished charging long before my phone had finished charging.