By 
The Jabra BT5020 is arguably one of the best headsets on the market, offering a powerful set of features and remaining at a low price. Other than it’s ability to connect to two devices at once, the headset also boasts a whooping 10 hours of talk time and 300 hours of standby.
Jabra BT5020 Specifications:
- Wireless: Bluetooth v2.0 hands-free
- Battery Life: 10hrs talk | 300hrs idle
- Weight: 0.6 oz (16 g)
- Multi-Point: 2 devices max
- Notifications: LED / vibrate
- Charger: AC Adapter or USB Cable
Just like any other headset, the BT5020 is easy to control as it only has a few buttons: Volume Up/Down, Power, and Talk/End. The volume keys are a bit sticky and difficult to press while wearing, but shouldn’t be an issue once setup properly. With one simple twist, the headset can be adjusted to be worn on the left or right ear. Since the earbud slides up and down, the headset fits most people. Once placed over the ear properly, the headset stays in place quite well. When compared to other wireless headsets on the market, the BT5020 remains comfortable to wear even for extended periods since it’s extremely thin and light weight. Also since unit resides behind the ear, it isn’t too apparent.
On the tech side, the Jabra sports Bluetooth v2.0 which supports features such as auto paring, multi-point connections, muting mic, voice dial, redial, call reject, and call waiting. The LED light provides info about the battery life as well as flashes blue/green when receiving a call. It is easy to be notified of an incoming call in loud areas since the BT5020 vibrates in addition to beeping. The performance was quite impressive as the call quality remained clear even about 25 feet away from the paired phone, but began to crackle after 35 feet. Another neat thing Jabra did was to include a USB cable to charge the headset in addition to a standard AC adapter. (keep one at home and one at work)
For people who need to make long important calls, this is probably the best and most affordable way to go since the voice quality is clear, offers 10 hours of talk time, is comfortable to wear, and costs about $50. Other headsets near the Jabra BT5020’s range include the Plantronics Discovery 665 and the Aliph Jawbone, however these cost around $100-150 and offer background noise-canceling features. This headset will work great for most people, is quite durable, and it isn’t too expensive to keep people from using. As we mentioned, the BT5020 is available online for just $53.
Buy Now: Jabra BT5020 – $53 (no tax + free shipping)
Links: Jabra.com (BT5020) | Related: Samsung WEP200
are actual human beings supposed to be able to read this site? with the corduroy textured background the text is entirely obscured. please, take a design class.
The browser you are using might be outdated or the server failed to load some of the images properly. Please try pressing the refresh button and it should become a whole lot better.
@Nick.. Pal you came here to read review of BT5020 or to review the website??? For me nothing wrong with the site.. May be you need to look into your machine a bit…
Thanks for the review of the 5020; I’m not clear on it’s noise cancelling capabilities though. the last couple of sentences make me think the 5020 does not block out background noise.
Nick: its your browser (probably FireFox)
@David
The 5020 does NOT offer noise canceling capabilities, but it does offer Wind Noise Reduction. This means, if wind is blowing by your headset, it will help reduce those artifacts for the person that is listening to you. If you do want noise cancellation tech, it will be a lot more pricey than this one.
P.S. Skatter Tech should work perfectly on the latest versions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari. And on XP, Vista, OS X, and Linux. If you are experiencing a problem please let me know.
Does the BT5020 come with those nice little ear buds as pictured on the website? I’m worried about the earpeice not fitting to my ear properly.
Yes! In fact, it comes with two buds in case you loose one of them! (see the 3rd picture)
does this handsfree set work with playstation 3
Hi, I just bought my BT5020, and it doesn’t come with the little ear buds you talked about?
I also own (2) BT5020s (1 bought for a backup – haven’t opened it yet) and I did not see the ear buds pictured in my package either – maybe they’re hidden somewhere? I’m very interested in this because the fit in the ear is one of my complaints with this unit.
The other major issue is sound quality. I’ve used many BT headsets (Plantronics, several Jabras, Motorola, Logitech, Cardo) and one of the consistent problems I have with Jabras is the lack of outgoing noise cancellation when background noise is high. Even the fancy-pants BT800 I own has this problem: incoming sound quality is great (better than the BT5020), outgoing sound quality is very mediocre. (That one is huge, fits poorly, and the Caller-ID feature is much better in theory than practice)
What I like about the BT5020 is: 1) looks/size/weight, 2) battery life, 3) compatibility with my Treo (hard to find BT devices that work reliably with a Treo – Jabras in general are excellent in this respect), 4) vibrate mode, 5) control layout and 6) no constant blinky “geek lights”. (only when you need to know something – ie a short time after turning the unit on or pairing it, the lights go off)
I don’t know what “wind noise reduction” this unit has, but it’s just as bad as all the other ones I’ve tried in the wind. It’s rare for me to find a headset that is not substantially worse than just holding the phone to my ear in that regard.
I may actually consider the uber-pricey Invisio Q7, but the initial hands-on reviews I’ve seen of that weren’t that glowing either.
Some day someone will make a BT headset with a retractable boom that can actually position the microphone in front of your mouth when you’re on a call. Until then, I think we’re going to be waiting forever for the Holy Grail..
I just bought the BT5020 for 29.99 at Fry’s and it DOES come with 2 ear buds.They’re in a small zip lock bag.
I am thinking of buying the 5020 having used a 500v for a couple of years, if you have wind noise problems with this type of headset, either buy or make yourself a small foam cover to go over the end of the mike, this works perfectyl in the windyest of conditions.
Think i am going to go out and buy a 5020 though.
roger.
where can i buy more earbuds? i keep losing them.
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I suggest contacting the Jabra support line. Here is the link:
http://www.jabra.com/Sites/Jabra/NA-US/pages/Support.aspx
Sometimes they are nice and will send you the buds for free since it costs pretty much nothing. And I also believe your warranty might cover something of that sort. But either way I doubt they would charge more than a few bucks for a couple of those ear pieces. Just try giving them a call.
Also if you don’t mind let us know how it turned out with another comment after you figure it all out!
I cannot enable vibrate mode on my BT5020. How do I do that? I tried turning it on while holding down the two volume buttons but that did not work.
press Vol + and Vol – for 3 seconds to turn Vibra on/off