My Big Fat ReviewA2DP, Not R2D2.
I can easily spend four hours on the phone so when I got my first cell phone a comfortable headset was a must. For years I've been using wireless headsets for my land line and being that the best quality and longest lasting phone I ever had was a Plantronics CT12 (truly a great phone) made the Pulsar 590e an easy decision. There are two versions of this headset the 590a and the 590e. The only difference is the 590a comes with more goodies. It has a charger stand and a Bluetooth transmitter for devices that lack Bluetooth. I didn't need either so I went with the 590e which is just the headset and charger cord. I had no idea what A2DP was when I bought the head set but got lucky that my cell phone, a Motorola RIZR Z3, is equipped with it. Basically A2DP is designed to transfer a uni-directional 2-channel, cd-quality, stereo audio stream. So this headset will not work if you don't have A2DP. The good news is A2DP is becoming pretty wide spread (here's an outdated list, yes outdated, of devices that have A2DP). For instance the Pulsar 590 will work your PS3, iPod, and bunch of other stuff. That's what great about this headset it's not just for you cell phone. It's a great headset for listening to music or playing video games. I've used it in conjunction with my 2in1 Wifi/Bluetooth combined with a Bluesoleil Bluetooth stack for Skype and the quality was quite good. Setup was a bit of a pain but that was not the headsets fault, Bluetooth on a PC is still not the most user friendly territory. More importantly it has functioned flawlessly with my cell phone. The sound quality is superb. The volume is always loud enough without losing quality. It's also incredibly comfortable. I've had a lot of headsets that hurt your ears after an hour or so, but the Pulsar 590 is great I've used it for around six hours on one call and no discomfort. The other great thing with the headset is the battery life, 10-12 hours depending on what you are doing. I've never had the headset die on me in the middle of a call, so kudos to Plantronics on the great battery life. There is only one small issue I have with the phone and that is flashing ring of blue light on the side of the phone while you are using it. Not so much for the person on the phone, but if someone is sitting next to you they get a bright blue flash of light in their face ever few seconds. It would've been nice if the light could be turned on and off, but no such luck, I checked the Plantronics website. If you are tech savvy you can go in and snip the power wire to the light, but again it's not a big deal. One last thing I've read some reviews where the phone no longer charged. The connections from charger to phone is a little weird and seems flimsy. I've personally had no issues, but I recommend being very careful in connecting and handling of the end of the charger cord to be on the safe side. I definitely recommend the 590 as a great all around Bluetooth device from phone calls to gaming it's fantastic.
12/9/10 - Update. If you are trying to use this headset with Windows 7 it currently doesn't work due to lack of adequate support by 7 for A2DP headsets in it's Bluetooth stack. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future and if so I will post an update here.