Zivio Boom: Can you hear me now?

First, welcome to the new Califmom Reviews site. I decided to break this out into its own animal for two reasons.

1. BlogHerAds requires me to...the advertisers get a little bummed if I'm reviewing a competitor's product right next to their ad. Totally understandable.
2. I wanted to, even though I had to. See how I did that right there. I convinced myself it was My Idea. This is a skill I have. If you're interested in lessons, let me know.

One of the way cool things about BlogHer was the swag, especially the cool swag. See, now all of the swag was cool. Some of it was rather uncool. That swag went to live in the Zwaggle swag recycling room like the rejected puppy that it was. Zwaggle helps homeless swag find a loving, caring home.

Enough about the homeless swag. Let's talk about the swag that came home with me.

For my first review, I'm talking about the Zivio Boom. Say it with me: Zivo Boom. It's fun to say, right?

Well, the Zivio Boom was thunk up by the same cool cat who thunk up the Joby Gorilla Pod. Yep, that bad-ass camera tripod that goes ANYWHERE. Seriously.

So, the cool cat from Joby sent his peeps to BlogHer to fix us up with his latest invention, the Zivo Boom bluetooth headset.

The cool:

• lightweight, like a flippin' feather
• adorable, sleek, stylin'
• retractable mic that makes you look like Madonna
• various sizes of ear thingies from Dumbo to pinhole, it'll fit your ears
• USB chargers in two lengths, plus an a/c adapter
• packaging in a sleek black box
• 300 hours of standby time
• 10 hours talk time
• paired to my Blackberry Pearl in a matter of seconds, a monkey could do it

The uncool:

• Noise. Crackling and static after a few seconds on a call making it impossible for me to have an actual conversation using my Zivio. (I have a tech support request into Joby on this one...I'm hoping it's a user error.)
• Fit. Even with a plethora of earpiece sizes, I need assistance getting this puppy to fit just right. I'm still messing around with it. In their defense, I have minuscule ears. Like baby-small. Freakish, really.
• Pricey. At a pre-order price of $129.95, this ain't your granny's Bluetooth.

If I can work out my issues with the sound quality, I think I can master the fit with the help of a mirror, and it'll just be me and my Zivio lovin' the talk time.

UPDATE:

I got an email from the folks at Joby today. Looks like they've figured out the problem with my headset and are making good by sending me a new one. Woohoo! Here's the email:

Hi Califmom,

It was nice meeting you at the BlogHer conference. Thanks for your
patience with this issue and please pardon the delay in our reply. We
didn't forget you! In fact, it's quite the opposite - we've been
working hard to solve the problem you described.

As we learned from our troubleshooting, it turns out that an earlier
version of the software we were using had some problems with the
Blackberry Pearl. Strangely, it was only the Pearl model which was
affected by this issue. Our engineers have been working long and hard
to fix this, and based on some recent tests, it appears we have licked
the problem.

I'm sorry you happened to get a headset that had the older version of
the software on it, and we'd like to do whatever we can to rectify the
situation. If you're interested, we'd be happy to send you a new one
along with a postage-paid return box for your to return the one with
the older software.

Comments

[Deb on the Rocks]

I'm stuck at the "dumb monkey can't do it" stage! It asks for a passcode, and I don't know nothing about no passcode. It doesn't seem to have paperwork with it.

[GeekMommy]

And here I was feeling guilty for not loving it as much as I thought I would.

Design? sleek!Styling? sleek!

Reality? not so sleek.

It probably would've helped if one of the little ear hooks hadn't gone missing from the box b/c I was "helped" with opening it at their table... I managed to retrieve various bits - but that wasn't one of them.

It's still sitting in the box here b/c I couldn't seem to get it to sit comfortably in my ear.

Wishing you luck with the support call - update when it happens, will you? :)

[Christine]

I think the passcode is 0000. I had to call to get it because I didn't have a manual, either.

FWIW, the sound quality is awesome on mine. Hope you get yours fixed!

[califmom]

Yes, the passcode is 0000.

I would just love it if they'd reply to the tech support request I submitted. I really think it's a faulty unit, but that's not something I can fix. :-(