Price Paid:  $100.00 from Sharper Image

Summary:
Although at first these seem like they'll do the trick, a number of poor design features make these a much poorer choice than some other brands. Advents are several years behind the leaders in technology and design, yet Advent charges a premium price. After looking at other brands in the same price range, I'm amazed that anyone buys Advent headphones. These should really be bagain-basement phones. Here's why:

1) Highly uncomfortable. I couldn't stand to wear mine more than an hour or so because of pressure on the ears and head. My ears start burning and I get a headache. They are noticably uncomfortable after 10 minutes. Supposedly they are self-adjusting, but they always clamp my head and ears too tightly -- perhaps the designers thought I'd wear them while jogging. It's true they are cushioned -- but how'd you like to have someone pressing cushions hard against your ears for hours? An ear-vise I don't need! And there is no way to manually adjust so they don't press as hard. Bottom line is that I don't use these at all because they're so uncomfortable. I checked out a Sennheiser headphone set in a store (haven't bought them yet) and they were much, much lighter, didn't clamp hard, and so much more comfortable. Weight on Sennheisers is listed in specs as only 3.5 oz with battery! The battery pack for the Sennheiser I looked at in the store is TINY, while the Advent takes 3 AAA batteries (so there's extra weight there).

2) Advent sound quality is good, but as others have complained, the tuning of the transceiver and headset drifts often. I need to retune headset to tranceiver every 10 minutes or so. Otherwise, the sound keeps cutting out like when you're listening to a radio station while driving through mountains. Another design annoyance is that the tuning wheel is identical in size and is right next to the volume wheel on the headset, so there's a good chance that when you're trying to retune you'll turn the volume knob instead and blast the top of your head off!

3) The battery system is really REALLY lame! The battery system alone will make you curse the day you bought Advent. With Sennheiser (and I think some other brands) you can purchase an additional battery pack that charges in the base of the tranceiver when you're using the other pack in the headphones. Then, if the headphone battery pack runs down, you can just swap for the fresh pack. With the Advent you're stuck with one set of batteries. In order to recharge them you've got to stop using the headphones and plug the headphones into a charger and wait for hours. The only other option is to buy your own additional batteries and buy a generic recharger. So that's additional expense plus a big mess of having an additioanal charging unit sitting around.

The whole charging system is poorly designed. Sennheiser and some other brands have "on stand" charging. With "on stand", when you put the headphones on their stand, they charge automatically. (I have a great wireless phone headset by Vtech that charges by induction when on the stand, so this technology is available.) With Advent, you have to plug a charging wire into a small hole in the headset. This means a) you need to find the wire and plug it into the small hole and b) you have an extra wire running from the tranceiver to the headset when charging. So you have a real rat's nest of 3 cords -- the tranceiver power cord, the audio input cord, and the headphone charging cord. Plus, as mentioned above, if you want an extra set of batteries to charge, you'll have to have a generic charger sitting around too with its cord.

Yet another problem with the battery system is that, as mentioned, Advent uses 3 AAA batteries. This means that if you did want to buy your own batteries to use as backup when the Advent batteries run down, you've got to pull out three AAA batteries, replace the little cloth "pull out the batteries" tab, and then insert three new batteries. This is a big pain compared with Sennheiser that uses a single pop-in battery pack.

A final problem with the charging system is that there is no charging light or other indication of when charging is occurring of completed.

Jeeze! Didn't Advent bother to look at their competition before designing something that works like a 10-year old prototype?

Strengths:
Decent sound for the non-audiophile. A little hiss but not bad. I can hear well anywhere in our two-floor house. Cheaper than Sennheisers.

Weaknesses:
Terribly inconvenient charging system that means you will be charging more than listening. Very, very heavy and uncomfortable because of large batteries and overall headphone design. I can't wear these longer than 1/2 hour.

Similar Products Used:
Sennheiser RS4. These are much lighter, much move convenient charging system.

Price Paid:  $99.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
This is a great sounding set of Headphones.I had better usage time per charge, after tossing the Nicads that came with the system and upgrading to a couple of sets of NiMH batteries. As far as the range of reception, I seem to loose the signal after 60 -70 feet. They can handle a decent amount of low end bass and have no problem producing crisp, clean highs.
These are a must for late night movies and can even make vacuuming more pleasent. Even with a vacuum running there was never any interfearence.

Strengths:
Volume controls are on the Headset.

Weaknesses:
Eats Batteries. I use an aftermarket ReCharging System using NiMH Batteries and it helps alot.

Similar Products Used:
AW810 Indoor/Outdoor Speaker