Review for Peltor Alert Hearing Protection Headset, 25dB, Headband Model - D1431M2RX7A

Author: 4dhalibut {!} , Satisfied customer (several times), from Pittsford, VT on Jul 19, 2010
Pros:  Excellent noise isolation, Very comfortable to wear.
Cons:  The am/fm radio is all but worthless.
Would recommend:  yes

4dhalibut wrote:

As hearing protection the M2RX7A is outstanding, I can find no fault with it. It is also amazingly comfortable to wear for extended periods, in fact I tend to forget I'm wearing it after a few minutes (even on hot days). The built-in microphones and volume control I expected to be a gimmick is anything but. Conversations are so clear and natural sounding that, again, I forget I have it on and yet I still have full hearing protection. Where it falls down, badly, is the AM/FM radio feature. Bluntly, it's just this side of consumer fraud, there is simply no excuse today for a receiver this insensitive. I live seven miles from the local AM station's transmitter tower and yet I have to tune very carefully to find it at all and then I immediately lose it if my head isn't pointed in exactly the right direction. The FM function is quite a bit better but still not really good. Again, it's unusually directional and insensitive. When you can tune in a station the sound quality is good and the receiver is stable but, unless you have a very strong signal, most of what you hear will be in mono not stereo. To its credit, it doesn't flip annoyingly back and forth between stereo and mono. I compared the radio function with a twelve dollar Coby pocket radio and the Coby won hands down for sensitivity and lack of directionality. AM/FM radios on a chip have been around for years. They work very well and they are cheap but they all need to be connected to properly designed antennas and this is what I suspect is Peltor's problem. If they get the engineering straitened out this will be a winner and while I do recommend it, I do so with serious reservations concerning only the radio function.