The Aliph Jawbone Prime takes our former favorite Bluetooth headset, the New Jawbone, and makes it better. The Prime is small, attractive, comfortable, and does a very good job of canceling noise, especially in windy areas—but its $129.99 (direct) price and some other minor issues force us to rank it just behind the $99.99 Plantronics Voyager Pro.

Just like its predecessor, the Prime is a real looker. It's compact and curved with a textured exterior panel and a single, small light that flashes white when the gadget is turning on and red when it's turning off. The two headsets are pretty much identical—the Prime, however, is also available in green, purple, red, and yellow, in addition to the original black.

The Prime also uses a new, better earpiece tip. It's softer than the old one, tilts the headset a bit more toward your cheek to help improve performance, and has a loop on the back to stabilize the fit within your ear. I found it to be very comfortable, even without adding the included earhook. The Prime comes with three different sizes of the new tips and two old-style tips. One big bonus of the new ear tips is that they push the Jawbone closer to your face. For the Jawbone to work its best, a sensor on the end of the headset needs to be touching your jaw. (If you're concerned with fit, you might want to consider the Voyager Pro, which cradles your ear entirely.)

As with previous Jawbone headsets, the Prime's buttons are large but a bit confusing. An invisible button on the back of the headset cycles through five volume levels, and a larger button on the body triggers voice dialing or turns the device on or off. Pressing both buttons simultaneously puts the Prime into pairing mode. The headset charges using a proprietary adapter that plugs into a USB port or a wall jack.

The Prime paired easily with a RIM BlackBerry Bold 9000 for AT&T, an LG Versa VX9600 for Verizon Wireless, and a Palm Treo Pro for Sprint. Range was very good: The Prime maintained a solid signal up to 30 feet away from each phone.

I tested the Prime against both an older Jawbone and the Voyager Pro in a wide variety of noise situations. Overall, the older Jawbone sounded a little harsh and robotic in the earpiece; the Prime sounded much more natural, but it let a bit more background noise through and delivered sound at a lower volume. This caused some trouble in extra-noisy situations, such as standing next to an industrial-strength air conditioner or driving down the highway at 40 mph. While transmissions sounded fine on the other end, I couldn't make out voices in the earpiece as clearly as I could with the Voyager Pro.

Voice transmissions from the Prime in noisy environments sounded very natural—better than the older Jawbone's. The Prime also surpassed the Voyager Pro at knocking out the music of a heavy-metal concert, although the Voyager Pro reduced more street noise. In quieter situations, the Voyager Pro transmitted slightly fuller sound.

The Prime's greatest strength is dealing with wind noise. In the simulated wind of an indoor fan, on an actual windy street, and in a moving car with the window down, the Jawbone Prime completely eliminated the wind noise. The old Jawbone would transmit some, and wind causes the Voyager Pro to skip and pop a bit.

Aliph also says it has improved the Prime's "off-the-cheek" performance. Taking the sensor off my cheek disabled the brilliant anti-wind function, but some noise cancellation was still maintained.

Along with its high price, the Prime's biggest drawback is a traditional Jawbone flaw: short battery life. I could eke out only 3.5 hours of talk time on a full day's charge (well below Aliph's rating of 4.5 hours), and eight days of standby time. On my tests, the Voyager Pro had almost twice the battery life (6.5 hours). I also wish the Prime supported single-ear stereo, so that you could listen to stereo music and podcasts. Fortunately, there's nothing to prevent Aliph from adding this feature in a future firmware update.

The Aliph Jawbone Prime is a top-notch headset choice, but in this round, we have to give the Editors' Choice badge to the Plantronics Voyager Pro for its louder, more solid sound, longer battery life, and lower price. But the Pro's bulky design isn't for everyone; if you value style and compactness, you can't go wrong with the Prime.

Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 3 hours 30 minutes

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