The Price: It's out today in black for $130. Silver and gold models will be available soon.

The Verdict: The new Jawbone beats its predecessor from top to bottom in comfort and sound. While the original earpiece set the standard for Bluetooth sound quality, wearing it for an hour felt like exercise to my ear. The gen 2 is much lighter, sits in my ear comfortably and barely touches my face. The clip is slimmed down and covered in leather, a much better feeling than the rubber and metal monstrosity of yore.

The outgoing sound is better than gen 1's too. Aliph ditched "Noise Shield" for "Noise Assassin" technology, and while that sounds like a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo, people on the other end of the line while I was testing it could hear a difference. The new tech kept the outside noise to a minimum and my voice stayed clear.

Despite these improvements, the Jawbone still has flaws. Incoming sound isn't much better than before; it's loud enough, but the digital crunch found in all Bluetooth headsets is still there. Considering how long Bluetooth has been around, it's a wonder why no one has been able to really improve on this. Also, the new Jawbone only has four hours of talk time compared to the old one's six; the weird part is, it almost has twice the standby time, over 8 days.

Since the only worthy competition for the Jawbone is, well, the Jawbone—or better still, the nXZEN nX6000—the gen 2 is a clear winner. Bluetooth headsets still have a way to go before they measure straight-up to using the phone, but this slimmed-down, enhanced Jawbone is another step in the right direction. [Jawbone]

[Jawbone Films via Uberreview]

When you make or receive a call and a Bluetooth headset is linked, the screen lets you route the call to the headset (where it's routed by default) or to the iPhone itself, or to the iPhone's speakerphone. This may seem like a silly little item, but anyone who has dealt with Bluetooth headsets for a while knows it can be a lifesaver: say a call is coming in, and you don't know where your headset is. Instead of driving off the road looking for it, you just tap "Speaker Phone." What about if you are getting out of your car, and want to leave the headset behind. Instead of powering down, and risking losing your call in the process, you just tap "Audio Source," select "iPhone" and get on your way.

I tested the iPhone with both the Aliph Jawbone headset and the Motorola S9, a pair of Bluetooth stereo headphones with microphone and call capability. Of course, music didn't play through the stereo headphones, but it could handle calls.

A single tap on the Moto or Jawbone headset main button is supposed to initiate speaker-independent voice recognition, and it does in a lot of really cheapo phones. On the iPhone, though, it does nothing, because the iPhone doesn't have voice dialing. A double-tap on the Jawbone (or a prolonged tap on the Moto) did initiate a "redial", however, even when the iPhone was totally dormant.

Not expecting much, I took the liberty of attempting to pair the phone with a Dell Windows Vista laptop. I was momentarily filled with hope when the laptop recognized the device, and even went through all of the stages of pairing. I was not surprised though when the whole exercise turned out to be moot: sure, the iPhone was paired, but it had no "services" to perform. Meanwhile, the iPhone screen simply showed that it was discoverable, nothing more. Feel free to browse the gallery below to see the process; maybe you'll spot a loophole that I could not. (The images are numbered, even if Flickr screws up the order.)

Continuing iPhone Coverage [Gizmodo]

Style:
Yes, it looks like a cheese grater but I didn't hear anyone complaining when Apple used that style in their computers. The truth is that there is just no good way to stick something on your ear without looking like a tool. The Jawbone tries it's best by using a soothing white LED instead of the bright blue one that is common on headsets nowadays and keeping their branding to a minimum. You get a combination of earplugs and ear pieces for a snug fit although they all look pretty much the same when you take them out of the box. Charging is done through either the USB port or plugging the USB cable into a power adapter. Thankfully, the power adapter also doubles for plugging in other devices that charge over the USB port (such as my Blackberry), although the manual does not encourage this.

One interesting thing to note is that the earpiece actually springs inwards instead of staying flush with the headset. This is to ensure to ensure that the sensor of the phone actually fits snugly against your face.

Comfort:
After about an hour or two, it starts to get a little sore but no more or less than other headsets I've tried.

Usage:
I'll say this much, I was able to sit in front of my laptop with Tiesto cranked all the way up and the caller on the other end was none the wiser. When quizzed on the issue, the best they could do was to detect a faint bass in the background but far from anything noticeable or annoying. Actually, I think the most annoying thing about this headset is the constant queries you'll pose to the person on the other end of the call asking them about the noise. It's difficult for me, at least, to sit there with the car window down, the music comfortably up and carry on a phone conversation without worrying that my friend things I'm an asshole for not quieting things down. In reality, he couldn't hear anything beyond my voice.

Listening to calls is a bit of a different story. I didn't notice the headset ever adjusting the volume of my phone calls although it would have been helpful. There are also no easy volume up or down controls from the headset, although there is a method to do it. Unfortunately, I found myself turning off the noise shield instead of tweaking the volume quite a few times. The manual actually recommends first to set the volume from the phone itself, but we all know how far that goes. Nothing that really impairs the ability of the headset, just a nuisance.

At the end of the day, it's not a perfect headset. It won't filter out the strong head-on wind that your walking into or let you talk to your friends from the middle of the dance floor. It will, however, make your every day conversations a lot more pleasant while eliminating the need to apologize for the noises that interrupt them. For me, it came down to being able to talk to clients in the airport without finding a quiet corner, having conversations on a busy street or just keeping the windows down as I drive. As long as you keep the expectations in check, you'll end up with a very rewarding purchase.

Thanks Revanche!

Our thoughts are pretty much in line with Revanche's. You can literally sit in a car or at your desk with your music pumped up and the other side will have no idea. Sure, there's wind noise, so you may not be able to walk outside when it's gusting or roll down your car windows.

Although we think the headset looks nice, quite a few did not. There's not really a Bluetooth headset implementation that will please everyone, but this does look nice to us. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Jawbone]

Now, you can see how small the Jawbone is on my shockingly disfigured noggin.

– Jason Chen

Product Page [Jawbone]

The redesigned Aliph Jawbone looks to be everything the original wishes it was. It's Bluetooth, and uses military noise canceling tech that can drown out the violent screams of traffic, lawnmowers, and anything else NOT your voice by using an array of microphones. Walt Mossberg had the first look: He found it worked great, except against wind noise. (Kind of a problem)

And in case you didn't notice, it happens to be the best looking headset ever made, IMHO. The set was designed by the ultra talented Yves Behar, the industrial designer known for many things, but maybe most recently his Leaf Lamp and the $100 Laptop. It comes in red, black, and silver from Cingular, for $120, starting today.

I've got two more pictures for you after the jump. And we'll give you our full take soon, as we were lucky enough to get a few sets of our own to check out.

–Brian Lam

Aliph Jawbone [Jawbone]

Well, we stopped looking at the pictures long enough to unequivocally state that they're reviewing the NextLink's "Invisio Mobile" JawBone Headset, of which they say very little. Instead, they show a lot of pictures of guns and PDAs.

BengalBoy & "The Kittens" Pull Out the "Big Guns" on NextLink's "Invisio Mobile" JawBone Headset!! [BengalBoy]