Plantronics offers up a smarter sensor to help you pick up those calls with ease

If you can believe it, Bluetooth earpieces are still a thing, and Plantronics is proving it with a new headset aimed at delivering comfort and quality in sound, as well as a reason for you to take that headset out of your ear when you’re not using talking.

One of the pitfalls with having a Bluetooth headset is that you can — let’s be honest — end up looking a bit silly as you walk around with it in your ear. Whether you make the comparison between yourself and a soldier from the future, or just someone who is permanently on the grid, it can little a little silly wearing that Bluetooth earpiece on the side of your face all the time.

The Plantronics solution is to throw some sensor technology into a new Bluetooth headset to work out when you’re wearing the headset and when you’re not, similar to what Parrot uses in the Zik headphones.

That Bluetooth headset is the Voyager Edge, a new headset from Plantronics that uses sensors to send the call to your mobile handset when you’re not using the earpiece, but also lets the earpiece intercept the call if you decide to put the earpiece in your ear.

Noise cancellation is built into the unit, with several microphones cutting out the background noise, while audio alerts tell you just who is calling, with a vocal announcement for the name of the caller.

“The Voyager Edge is designed to suit our customers throughout their day – at work and at play,” said Peter Petrides, National Retail Sales Manager for Plantronics in Australia and New Zealand.

“With the number of mobile users on the go, teleworking has become a huge part of everyone’s lives. With a mobile, on-the-go lifestyle people depend on reliable audio devices that can seamlessly handle all transitions. Voyager Edge is the perfect companion to any smartphone, offering premium features in a stylish, intelligent and comfortable earpiece.”

As appears to be the norm for Plantronics earpieces, you’ll find a small case for the Voyager Edge in the box, capable of storing and charging the earpiece with its own battery. If you don’t have the battery case laying around, it can take a microUSB plug to charge from as well, the same style of plug used to charge pretty much every smartphone that isn’t made by Apple.

And interestingly, Plantronics has included Near-Field Communication as well, making it easy to pair with NFC-enabled phones simply by touching the headset to the supported smartphone.

Support for the earpiece should be with any of the mobile operating systems, including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, though only the latter two will support NFC. A location app is also available called “Find MyHeadset” which can send a tone to the headset to find it in your home, but this app is only compatible with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Pricing for the Voyager Edge comes in at $149, with availability for the Bluetooth earpiece in stores now in both black (Carbon Black) and white (Glacial White).