Review: LG Tone Infinim Headset
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Product Reviews
I purchased the LG TONE INFINIM Bluetooth Stereo Headset on Amazon to use with my iPhone 6+. I was so excited! From the reviews and description, it sounded like exactly what I wanted for listening to music while working out and still being able to take calls.
When I got it, I immediately paired it up and could hear my music with beautiful clarity. Great balance, nice highs and lows. I hate most earbuds, but these fit in my ears very well. There was just one problem — I couldn’t hear anyone on phone calls, and callers couldn’t hear me. Hmm.
Thinking it was a problem with the headset, I exchanged it. Amazon is great about that kind of thing, you know? I got the new one, paired it, tested it — and had the same problem.
So I tested this one with the boyfriend’s (Android) phone — it worked just fine. I erased my phone completely and set it up as new, and still had the same problem. I sought advice from co-workers (I mean, come on, I do work for Apple) and checked out all the suggestions. No joy. I Googled and could find nothing about problems between this headset and iPhones. In fact, there were reports of it working nicely with the 5 and 5s models.
I went to the Apple store and they swapped out my phone. Same problem. Then we got the bright idea to try the headset with the tech’s iPhone 6, and found that we couldn’t hear calls on it, either.
Finally I did what I should have done originally, and called LG. After finally getting the idea across to a man who didn’t have a firm grasp of the English language, and didn’t even ask what model iPhone I was using, or what version of iOS it was running. He just put me on hold and went away for a bit, then come back and said, “The HBS-900 is not compatible with iPhone.”
I said, “With any iPhone, or just my iPhone?”
“We have not tested with latest,” he said. “You have latest, yes?”
“Yes, the iPhone 6+ running iOS 8.4,” I replied.
“We have not tested,” he said again.
Now that seems a major oversight on LG’s part, and while the product description mentions an Android app for easy pairing, it also says there’s a manual pairing mode (which I used) for other devices. That’s nothing like saying, “This won’t work with iPhones” and it is misleading marketing. I am very unhappy that LG has overlooked such a huge market segment with this poor decision, and that I have wasted so much time on this thing as a result. I’ve had decent experiences with LG products in the past, but I’ll think twice before buying anything from them in the future.