Now that Germany dropped nearly all COVID-19 precautions … our Kindergarten is closed due to, guess what, COVID-19. And our little boy has a fever.
Which left me working from my living room once again, while my son toggled between sleeping on the couch and watching shows on Netflix. The perfect opportunity to test my Poly Voyager Focus 2 headset in a noisy and somewhat unpredictable environment.
And wow, what a great call performance! Call quality is great on my side, with clear voices and really good passive noise reduction. For the far-end side, the microphone of the Poly Voyager Focus 2 is great as well, especially in terms of focusing on my voice and blocking ambient noise. Nobody heard the TV, nobody heard the doorbell. Even my son was not heard by my call partners when he talked to me. Phenomenal!
The only downsides I have experienced so far:
- Compared to other headsets I have used the performance when listening to music is just average. With the VF2 being a call-optimized headset with relatively small drivers, that had to be expected I guess.
- Active Noise Reduction is available with the VF2, but for me it is only usable in the low setting. Set to high, which is the only other active level, the integrated ANC produces way too much white noise.
- My head seems to be incompatible with the VF2. I cannot find a position in which the headset just stays on my head; once I start looking down - for example at the keyboard - and the angle gets too steep, the headset starts its way down as well. I guess this is due to the fact that the VF2 is an on-ear headset, as over-ear headsets put on my head do not suffer from that problem.
Apart from those issues, everything else is near perfect. The battery seems to hold on forever, the fit is very comfortable and the mic boom with raise-to-mute is very easy to operate. Moreover, the VF2 informs you of some specific states via voice announcements - for example, when you are muted and get a call the VF2 actually tells you that you are muted.
In the end: Would I recommend the Poly Voyager Focus 2 headset to others? Yes, absolutely! With the very good call and microphone quality, a very comfortable fit and an all-day battery life this headset is a perfect companion for every remote or hybrid worker. So perfect that it has earned a permanent place in my tech pouch.