Quick Look: Wireless Web Meeting Headset From Monoprice

The headset you wear at work, or for meetings with friends and family is not the most exciting piece of technology you own.  It is frequently used though, and they do wear out from time to time.  It might be that you posses numerous high end wireless headsets and are perfectly happy using them in your day job.  Then again you might just prefer to have a pair of beater headphones which live on your desk or in the bottom of a bag.

If the latter is what you are looking for, something that is lightweight, able to connect to just about anything, and inexpensive to buy or replace instead of shopping for a new pair of Grados then the Workstream by Monoprice Bluetooth Wireless Web Meeting Headset is something to consider.  It’s designed to favour the frequencies most voices produce, comes with a removable microphone of acceptable quality and has a price tag under $50; often on sale for less than $40.

We’re Not Ignoring You, You’re On Mute Again

The rise in the chance for many to work from home also brought with it an upsurge in online meetings, which like their in-person equivalent could have simply been a email.  This has been a boom for conferencing software apps and headsets sellers both.  It has also revealed that many of those apps have headsets they like, and ones they do not.  As many companies did not have an official headset to provide upon request, or worse went with the cheapest Jabra model they could find, the audio quality on those conferences can vary tremendously.

An obvious choice is to run out and get your own pair, hopefully one with a name and a price that your expense department won’t question.  Monoprice’s choice to name this particular product a wireless web meeting headset and to sell it for less than $50 seems to be perfect for that.  The price does give you some insight into the overall quality, which is not quite as impressive as a gaming headset worth well over $100.

The headset weighs in at a very portable 8.6 oz. (244g) and can be folded into a small space, like a laptop bag or backpack.  The headband protects the leather like ear cups when folded and the mic comes off so it won’t snag on anything.  The headband is plastic, but stiff enough to not be bent out of shape in less than perfect storage conditions.  There are metal reinforcements in the joint to add strength, as well as stiffening the adjustment extensions.   The removable microphone boom may be a bit short for some, and require you to sit the ear cups further forward on your ears than normal.  It also features a physical mute button on the actual mic, which can still be easily clicked even with the foam cover installed.   That foam cover is a nice touch you don’t often see on headsets of this class.

Do Your Job And A Bit More

The microphone audio quality is at least on par with similarly priced headsets, you will sound somewhat hollow compared to a proper microphone but several days of usage proved it to be perfectly sufficient.  No one seems to have noticed I swapped from the Corsair HS80’s I was previously utilizing, nor was I asked to repeat anything during meetings.   The incoming audio is fairly bass heavy and very clear, on Teams, Zoom and a finicky VoIP system as well.  Musical performance is nothing to write home about but is not unpleasant if you like to listen to tunes while you work.

There is an interesting toggle located on the headset which Monoprice refers to as the vibration feature.  It is advertised as enabling 3D vibration and stereo surround sound functionality.  It doesn’t vibrate as much as a haptic headset, but could instead be thought of as a Beats button.  If you recall that series of headsets they were extremely bass heavy and enabling this feature makes the headset reminiscent of a Dr Dre branded headset.  It also adds a bit of reverb to emulate surround sound so flipping it on during a boring meeting can provide some amusement as there is a definite change in everyone else’s voices.

The headset natively supports Bluetooth 5, though without any of the advanced features available to that protocol.  However it also ships with a USB wireless dongle so you can use these even if you are stuck on a desktop.  It also means you could connect it to a PS5 once you hit the end of your day if you so wished.  The dongle will disable the efficient sleep mechanism that extends battery life on WiFi giving a hard limit to battery life, thankfully there is a wired connection available as well if you do forget to charge them before your ~26 hours are up.   From the initial charge of about two hours, the Monoprice Wireless Web Meeting Headset lasted through three exceedingly long days of work without a recharge while connected via Bluetooth.  That is incredibly handy for something you don’t want to touch after the workday ends.

There are a lot of worse conferencing headphones at this price, without any of the features that this headset has.  The limited number of features gives Monoprice’s a significant battery life advantage over gaming headsets.  If you’ve become used to getting up and doing other things during meetings then the Monoprice Wireless Web Meeting Headset offers just what you’d hope for when on a call with your team and at the right price.