Let's face it. This day and age, Bluetooth headsets and headphones are becoming more and more common. Especially now that a lot of laws are being passed making hands-free cell phones mandatory. Usually these devises are a little gadget that sticks out of one ear on a person making them look like the Borg from Star Trek. However, more "normal" looking Bluetooth headphones are starting to hit the market. Not only for cell phone use, but also music from various Bluetooth audio player devises that have started to hit the market. Cardo Systems has released the S2 headphones with music in mind, but also for cell phones. In fact, I would say these headphones are more targeted towards the music.

In our testing, the fact that they are targeted more for music is actually a plus for cell phone use as far as the sound and volume are concerned. When using these headphones with a cell phone, you could hear the person on the other end loud and clear. However, like most Bluetooth headphones, the microphone picks up even the slightest bit of background noise. The person on the other end asked me to repeat myself many times due to the background noise. Like I said though, this seems to a common problem with pretty much all Bluetooth headphones in this price range. However, the fact the the microphone is up next to your ear and farther away from your mouth that the typical Star Trek style headsets it might lend itself to picking up a little more background noise. If you are in an office or your car though, they are fine. After all, that is where you would use them most of the time anyway.

When wearing the S2 headphones, I found them to be quite comfortable. Honestly, they didn't look like they would be very comfortable so I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately they are a little awkward to put on because they are designed to go around the back of your head instead of over the top like most headphones. It takes a little getting used to and it's only a minor nuisance.
After testing them with cell phone use, we needed to test them with some music. After all, while being stereo, the sound of a cell phone will always be weak compared to music. Unfortunately we didn't have a Bluetooth music player to test them with, so we tested them using a Bluetooth enabled laptop. Honestly, I was expecting these headphones to sound better for the price. We could only turn up the laptop to about half volume, otherwise there would be some noticeable distortion. This could be due to a limitation of the Bluetooth technology itself though. A really cool feature is you can control iTunes from the headphones themselves. You can play, pause, fast forward, rewind and skip to next and previous tracks. Right from the headphones! I think that feature makes up for the not-so-great sound quality.

Aside from the awkwardness of putting them on (or "around" I should say) your head and the background noise picked up from microphone, these are pretty good headphones. The controls are quite intuitive easy to use. They were easy to setup and they hold a charge for a long time. They're rated at 7.5 hours of listening time and a whopping 150 hours in standby mode.