I have recently had the pleasure and chance to test out a few Logitech products aimed for the office, home office and also to travel use. I of course thank you Logitech for giving me a chance to loan to test out these products. Since I work with collaboration using Microsoft Teams this is the point of view I have towards these products. How they cope up in a real daily work I do. I work mostly at my home office and quite often I have most of the daytime quiet house, but then sometimes when the family is home I do get plenty of background noise to my office room. Microsoft Teams is my primary tool for work, and I of course listen to lots of music for my concentration. I also occasionally watch some YouTube or other videos, for example Microsoft Build and Ignite materials. When I am traveling my point is on the overall usability and ANC is also very important. I am writing this post in a train, listening to the music. I also spend time occasionally in the airplane where a good ANC makes a lot of difference.
These days I also want to aim towards my goal to pack lighter (I have a long way to go there) and it also includes my office gear. Which headphones or buds I take with me is the question #1. Do I know I will definitely have a meeting or an online event happening when I am traveling, or will be more occasional if that happens? For events and meetings I want my gear to have a good audio quality with Microsoft Teams. Is the meeting going to involve more people on the road than just me? Do I need a speakerbuck with me? Or are Teams Certified buds or headset is enough? How good noise cancellation those devices have? Is the audio on buds and headsets good enough for me to enjoy the music? These are the questions what I have running in my head when testing out new devices. And yes, I am also a gadget geek so I love trying out new tech. Always. What I am also happy is that I can give feedback to the vendor about my experience – perhaps all this also helps them to build better devices in the future.
Logitech Zone Vibe 125
I got my hands to test out Logitech Zone Vibe 125 wireless headset some time ago. These are lightweight and come with a hidable boom mic. Comparing to Microsoft Headset 2+ or Jabra Evolve2 85 these are a lot less expensive as well. These come with a USB-A dongle, while the business use version Zone Vibe Wireless come with USB-C dongle. And as far as I know and have let myself to understand from Logitech that Zone Vibe 125 and Zone Vibe Wireless are actually very nearly the same product in most of aspects. Vibe Zone Wireless is intended for the Business use, while Vibe 125 is not sold directly to companies. The reason I got Vibe 125 for testing is that they didn’t have Zone Vibe Wireless available at that time.
You can check out Tech Specs from the Logitech product page. In the nutshell 18 hours of use time, noise cancelling boom mic, lightweight headset . These are not certified for Microsoft Teams but I have used these with Microsoft Teams without issues. Multipoint Bluetooth 5.2 and dongles. LogiTune is of course the app for updating and managing the headset. Zone Vibe Wireless tech specs can be found here.
My experiences
My first impression about Logitech Vibe 125 was that “oh myy, how light this is for over-the-ear headset!”. I have to say that these are really comfortable to wear for longer periods of time. What was a bit odd that the boom mic was on the left side, but eventually I got used to that. The boom mic hides away very nicely, when it is not needed. User interface is simple and charging with USB-C is the standard one these days.
The smaller price comes with some lack of features. Zone Vibe 125/Wireless does not have ANC. If you are working in the open office this does not block the surrounding noise. If you are traveling, you can’t escape to your own quiet or music bubble. If you are the home office and kids are home.. Well, you know you will hear them. That is the part of lightness as well: Vibe 125 design is not closed, but sits lightly on your ear. I found out that I could do meetings with Vibe 125 when the family was home, but it was a lot harder to concentrate without ANC. That is my personal trait of course.
On the other hand – it was great to listen to music with this headset while working. And that music does block out some of the surrounding noise, but does not isolate you completely (it can depend on your volume). But that also means that the audio is not contained to your ears either.
Microphone quality on the other hand is really excellent. Boom Mic with 2 microphones has enough noise cancellation to make it possible to use the headset with surrounding noise present. The battery is long enough and that 18 hours seems to be fairly accurate (two working days if you need to push it) and 5 minutes charge gives you an extra hour.
The pouch that comes with the headset also indicates that these are not meant for the traveling – pouch is soft and doesn’t really protect the headset the way I would want it to happen. It can keep the dust away when stored, but unless you have a good space in your bag for the headset I wouldn’t carry them to all places too often.
There was also a USB-A to USB-C adapter, but I have to say I had some issues with that. The best way I got these to work every time was by using Logi Dock USB-A port for the headset dongle. So if you have only USB-C ports (like on my Surface Laptop Studio) I would get Logitech Vibe Wireless version.
Of course for the price of $129/139€ this headset is a great set of features. The only things that I find are the lack of Microsoft Teams Certification, ANC and a good carrying case. However currently I think this headsets positions itself nicely to offices and home offices which don’t have too much background noise. Perhaps you have a quieter corner or most of the time you need to have meetings without shouting it aloud to everyone, but you don’t really need the ANC. For attendees they can enjoy a good quality of your voice because of the boom mic and noise cancellation (+ on top you get Microsoft Teams noise cancellation as well). You can use these for hours, since they are really comfortable.
I used Zone 125 during my sessions at Global XR Conference. You can check out the voice quality directly from videos if you like. During both sessions my family was home as well – which is a good test for mic’s noise cancellation. Since these sessions were not done via Teams, the lack of certification didn’t matter.
Logitech Zone 125 / Wireless are reasonably priced, comfortable collaboration headsets. These are especially good for hybrid offices that on average have less people present daily. The headsets lack Microsoft Teams certification.
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