Macsense BlueICE BTi-660 Bluetooth Earset: Bitter Sweet experience

So I went to Fry's Electronic store today, and picked up a little gadget called "Macsense BlueICE BTi-660 Bluetooth Earset". On the surface,this little gadget should be doing exactly I am looking for: turn a regular headphone into a bluetooth stereo headset. And now that iPod Touch gen2 with iPhone OS3 supports Bluetooth headset, I thought it's about time to get rid of the wire.

I brought this US$29.99 device home, and found that most other places online, like here and here and here and here all selling the device at a more expansive price. So I was like, sweet, maybe I got a good deal.

Charging the device was pretty smooth, and so I start plug in the headphone and try out the device. My first impression was pretty good. But later I find that the pair goes kind of on and off once it got out of sync. In fact, it got so screw up that eventually I need to reboot the iPod Touch, as the Bluetooth was not able to turn on. After a reboot, everything seems to go back to normal.

At first I thought WiFi may alter the Bluetooth, but turns out there's no relationship at all. Wifi and Bluetooth can run at the same time, as I read my email while listening music through Bluetooth headset.

However, the following things still bugging me and makes me seriously think about returning it.

• The audio quality is really sub par. I can tolerant it for listening podcast, but listening to music using the headset is like listening to FM radio.
• iPod Touch couldn't use the microphone that comes with the headset. It's a pretty well known issue as it turns out. Maybe I really need to buy a headphone with the mic, meaning paying the USS$29 Apple tax? (People seem to be pretty upset by that) (more of the bitching)
• Watching video using Bluetooth headset has audio out-of-sync problem. Interestingly, sometimes the problem is more serious than the other times. But there's NEVER a time that the audio are in-sync. The only way to avoid the out of sync problem is using a wired headphone.
• You HAVE to use the headset to control volume, yet you also HAVE to use the device (iPod Touch) to change track and so on. That kind of defeat the purpose of having a wireless bluetooth headset. (Some technical issue about this shit)
• I also tried the headset with my Nokia 5300, and the experience was even more terrible. I could stop the track, but I couldn't start the track again. Sometime the navigation may trigger dialing a phone number. It also dropped off with no good reason. Audio quality was terrible. Forward and Backward track works but it was so sluggish. It made me decided never use a Bluetooth headset with the Nokia 5300 ever again. On the other hand, on my iPod Touch, at least the pause and start feature works.

So all in all, this is just a little cheesy toy. It's nice to see that the Bluetooth feature in iPod Touch really works, but it's time to get rid of this piece of joke.