Orosound Tilde Pro Hybrid Bluetooth Office Headset

Turns out that you can answer or disconnect phone calls with the central left button on the headset. It still has it's quirks but now it's much more useful.

The Pros: 1. Fantastic voice quality, especially when connected via USB cable. 2. Comfortable 3. Long battery life
The Cons: 1. No way to answer or disconnect a call from the headset. There are buttons for volume, mute, and clear sound (to talk to/hear someone in person without removing the headset. But there is no button to answer or disconnect a call. It's the first headset I've used without this capability. 2. When you're listening to an audio source and a call comes in, or you make a call, the audio source is muted but not paused. It's good that the call takes priority but with other headsets, the audio source is paused when a call comes in. 3. Whenever you touch your cell phone for anything, it pauses audio which is annoying. It should only pause audio for a call. For example, if you're watching YouTube on your computer and you touch your phone screen for ANYTHING, it will mute (but not pause) the video. It's a nit-picky complaint but it's annoying and other manufacturers have figured out how to make audio/video pause only when you're on a call.

FYI - My unit was a factory refurb so it's possible that some of my cons are actually malfunctions that don't affect new units.

I bought this headset based on the reviews of the microphone/noise rejection.

It does an excellent job of blocking outside noise from entering the mic so callers on the other end do not hear any background noise at all. This is definately the products main strength and the primary reason for my purchase choice.

The comfort of the headband, the sound quality, and outside noise cancellation are a little underwhelming but still quite good (i.e. better than most) I believe the product could be substantially improved in these areas.

Very user friendly, works great for my job. My voice comes through very crisp and clear. The noise canceling wheel is great but the feature itself can be improved in my opinion. Overall a great device, I appreciate the headset advisor team taking the time to go through each of the features before I purchased it.

The product works great. It has excellent noise cancellation blocking out the noise you hear when listening through the headphones as well as the sound that is picked up through the boom mic. I noticed that my previous headset was picking up background noises like tapping on my desk and my mouse clicks, which was pointed out by people on the other side of my call as well as echoed through their microphones. Since using the Tilde Pro, I no longer hear those echo sounds through their microphones and the people on the other side said that they no longer hear any of the tappings on the desk or mouse-click noises.

My use-case is taking Zoom calls and listening to focus music while working from noisy environments like cafes, or while working from home and doing background activities like cooking, cleaning, etc. I'm often on calls back-to-back all day long, with a mix of internal and external people (sales, recruiting, 1:1s, running meetings, etc).

I've tried a ton of well-reviewed headsets, and this is definitely the best I've found. But I'm still moderately disappointed.

cons:

1. It's too tight on me, and I get a headache after a few hours of wear. I'm told there's a break-in period of a few weeks, so fingers crossed.
2. It points a red light at end of the boom mic at the camera, super weird and distracting. You can enable "night mode" to turn this off, but the setting doesn't stick.
3. The configuration software isn't great in general, doesn't work on mobile, and requires a USB-C connection to work (can't just use bluetooth). Not the end of the world, but because of the night-mode issue (see above) it's pretty annoying.
4. The mic boom pops off a little too easily, which can be embarrassing during calls, or cause it to get lost in your bag during transit.
5. The headset does not fold up nicely (like bose qc35) for travel, making them a little suboptimal for on-the-go, especially with the mic boom popping off.
6. Pairing with a phone and a computer both can cause some weird behavior, though not as bad as others I've encountered. Improving this would make me use the headphones a lot more.
7. It doesn't display the battery % remaining in your connected phone or laptop, which really sucks, especially considering the battery life is not great.
8. Occasionally, it doesn't work when I join a new zoom meeting, despite it working just fine on the meeting before (no sound/mic). I have to turn the headphones off and on again (and maybe do another weird step, I can't remember) to make them work again. Really embarrassing and distracting.

pros:

1. Especially when coupled with the mac app krisp, people can't hear anything other than what I'm saying. No toilets flushing, no people talking loudly near me, no construction sounds on a loud street, no cooking sounds, nothing. I may have to speak up a little to sound good in those environments, but it works. The mic sound quality is totally good enough for calls, maybe not for podcast recording or whatever.
2. The sound quality is totally good enough for listening to music. Not the headphones for crazy audiophiles but I have no problem listening to music.
3. I really like that the noise canceling is enough to not let background sounds distract me, but not so much that I'm oblivious to what's going on around me.
4. The side tone is perfect (when turned all the way up to 5), I don't strain my voice when talking all day.
5. It looks fine, a little silly but not distracting or unprofessional.
6. You can talk while it's charging.

I really hope Orosound makes some improvements, I'd buy a v2 in a heartbeat (and probably one for each person on my whole team, too – right now it's not quiite good enough to recommend it unreservedly).