Until we get a Bluetooth headset that comes pre-installed with voice-guided recipes, or meditative whale songs, we want our Bluetooth headsets to do one seemingly simple task and we don't want it to cost us the earth.
Sudio (not to be confused with Phil Collin's song Sussudio) is an electronic company who uses the love line "refreshingly simple" on its marketing materials. Those who are familiar with marketing guff know how to read between the lines, and to us "refreshingly simple" spells cheap and cheerful, and we're pleased to see that, especially in relation to mobile phone accessories.
The Sudio Rize fits this description to a tee. It looks like so many other headsets do; an inch in length and finished in matte-black plastic. It has three buttons, the volume keys and a multi-purpose button on top. In the box the headset comes with an ear hook and a USB charger, but no travel charger. This is a bit of a letdown, you're much more likely to be near a power point than a computer when you're on the road; however, we did notice that the charging connection fits with new Nokia chargers. We tested it with a charger we had in our labs and found that it worked, so Nokia users are in luck even if everyone else loses out.
Once charged we paired the Rize to numerous phones without any difficulty. As with most Bluetooth headsets, pairing is a matter of locating the Rize using your Bluetooth-capable phone's search function and then entering the passcode "0000". The phone calls we made with the Rize were passable, but not excellent. With the connected phone up to 2 metres away from the headset we heard only minor interference during calls. Over 2 metres and the distortion and break-ups were more prominent. This may not sound fantastic, with Bluetooth range supposedly up to 10 metres, but keep in mind that these results are on par with most of the headsets we test, including those which are over five times the price of the Rize.
Manufacturers of Bluetooth headsets often make outlandish claims about the performance of the latest units, as well as the technology which supposedly gives this superior performance, and they charge accordingly. The Sudio Rize isn't the world's best Bluetooth headset, equipped with only the basic features, but it is the best value headset we've seen. You can pay a lot more for a hands-free headset, but Sudio proves you don't need to.
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