My New Siri Headphone Setup
If you have an iPhone 4S you know that while Siri isn’t perfect yet, the spoken interface can be amazingly useful, and it’s definitely the future. While Apple works out the kinks on Siri from the software side, I’ve been searching for the best accessory setup for talking with her on the go or when I’m working.
Ideally, I wanted to be able to:
- Send and receive quick texts while I’m on my bike.
- Be wireless so I could have my phone in a side bag sometimes (again for biking)
- Have a decent transition between music / Siri when I’m working
- Minimize looking like a total tool
- Not block situational awareness, both for social reasons and safety
- Keep costs reasonable so I’m not worried about losing it or getting rained on too much
Eventually, we’ll probably all get a jewel in our ear with which to subvocalize commands to our digital assistant, but for now I’ll have to do this:
The first part of the setup is a Sony Bluetooth headset clip. (Currently $34 on Amazon)
It decouples the blue-tooth/microphone component from the headphones, which is great! This way I can use my big cushy headphones if I’m hacking away all day without losing one-click access to Siri. I also looked at the Jabra CLIPPER but wanted something that would be easy to quickly clip on/off the top of a t-shirt and the reviews of the CLIPPER point out that it is a more heavy-duty mechanism that isn’t great with thin cloth. So far the Sony Bluetooth clip is working well and I appreciate that it has a radio tuner as an added bonus. (I’m addicted to WNYC)
I also wanted a discrete headphone setup that would also work well for biking, so I opted for a JLABS single ear bud (Currently $10 on Amazon). They don’t have as nice sound quality even as the standard iPhone earbuds, so audio-philes might scoff at using this for music on the go, but I would rather trade that for the safety of having one ear open anyway. And for $10, I’ve found the quality to be adequate. Again, for serious music listening I just swap out my big head cans.
So that’s my new setup! I’ve only been using this for a couple days now but I’m pretty excited about it so far. Here’s the end result:
And a special shout-out to my siblings-in-law for getting me this for Christmas! :D
