The Blucalm INSIGHT 50 positions itself as a professional-grade headset for conferencing and extended wear. While it doesn’t aim for audiophile territory, its strengths lie in comfort, clarity, and design customisation.
I have been using a Blucalm headset for the last year; the impressive UCH30. When I reviewed them I was blown away by their ability to reject background speech, something most conferencing headphones are relatively poor at given that they are intended to let you talk to people via your computer. The only major downside is that they are wired, with the inconveniences that brings.
Enter the INSIGHT 50 wireless headset.
The new headphones are a different beast from the UCH30s. Actually, beast is definitively the wrong term; the INSIGHT 50 is positioned as an ultra-lightweight, comfortable conferencing headset. There is much less emphasis on voice rejection and sound cancellation and far more on long term wearability.
To set some context, I’ve been using the INSIGHT 50 headphones primarily with Microsoft Teams conference calls; some one-to-one meetings but mostly with groups of five or more people. Some of those sessions lasted 3 or 4 hours (don’t ask!).
Physical device
The headphones are a very lightweight design with nicely padded earphones. Unlike my Jabra 75T headphones the INSIGHT 50 has the boom and controls on the left-hand side. Not that that makes a difference to me.
As with most such headphones, the INSIGHT 50s come with a USB connected base station; the headphones sit in the dock when not in use in order to charge them.
The headphones sit into the docking station easily and securely. I found the docking station just a little bit too light to be able to remove the headphones from the dock one handed but this is easily addressed with some double-sided sticky tape or blue tack. It has both USB A and C ports as well as a USB C power connection. These let the dock act as a small USB hub, which is always useful.
The ‘pièce de résistance’ that sets the dock apart is that Blucalm have incorporated a magnetic front panel into the dock in front of a LED backlight capable of 7 colours. You can laser-etch the plate to customise it with your branding etc. to add a little bling to your desktop. I’d like to say that that it’s just a marketing gimmick, the truth is that I absolutely love it. For my review, Blucalm kindly sent me several plates. I have one with my MVP logo and signature, a second with an outline of my beautiful classic car and a third with the Novia Works logo. They bring me a few moments of joy every day!
- Sturdy dock though may benefit from sticking down.
- Brandable, illuminated custom faceplate.
Comfort and Wearability
As I mentioned, I’ve worn these for extended periods of time. With many headsets I find their constant pressing against my ears to be fairly uncomfortable after a while, especially as I wear glasses at my desk. This never occurred wearing the INSIGHT 50s and as a result they have become my daily headphones. If anyone would like a set of Jabra 75T in excellent condition, please let me know.
- Exceptionally lightweight, making it ideal for long sessions without discomfort.
- Ear cups and headband materials appear thoughtfully chosen for breathability and pressure distribution.
Controls and Usability
The headphones are pretty minimalist and unobtrusive. They are compact at around 160mm and 200 mm on the dock; 10% smaller than the Jabra’s in each dimension.
They have an LED in the left earpiece that shows a gentle red ‘breathe’ light whilst charging, blue when charged and when worn not in a call which changes to a bright red when you are busy, acting as an ‘On-Air’, do not disturb indicator for other people. It also flashes red when a call is incoming. Sneakily, you can activate the busy light manually when not in a call 😉
The controls are simple. A mute/voice assistant button is at the front near the top of the left earpiece, while at the rear there is a power/pairing button that can also be pressed to answer/hangup/reject a call, and a volume/track control rocker below. They all work well, but I do find that they are insufficiently tactile, with little physical differentiation between buttons. They would benefits from much more pronounced mouldings in the buttons.
- This makes it difficult to operate by feel, especially during calls or while multitasking.
- A redesign with more pronounced textures or spacing would significantly improve usability.
Sound Quality
Listening
For the intended purpose, IE conference calls, the audio is clear and well-balanced, tuned for voice rather than music. I did try playing some ACDC through them that it was fine but you lacked the weight and the base extension exactly you should expect from a small set of headphones rather than a audiophile pair.
- Not Hi-Fi grade, but perfectly suited for conference calls, webinars, and voice-driven tasks.
- No distortion or harshness noted during typical use.
Speaking
The microphone seems well balanced. Listening to the recordings I made there were no annoying artefacts (sibilance or plosives) and the audio was clear and well rounded. To my ear it was definitely ‘pleasanter’ than my (inexpensive) desktop microphone.
I note that, unlike many conference headphones, raising the mic boom does not mute the microphone. I’m not sure if this is a big deal to be honest. People seem to have endless issues with leaving their mic up causing them to be muted. I also noted that muting the headset mic doesn’t switch the Teams mic icon; Teams certified headsets do this, though how big an issue it is I’m not sure.
Noice cancellation
More interesting is how they perform in terms of background noise rejection. I performed the same test I did with the UCH30s which is to have Alexa playing at full volume during a test Teams call; I then reviewed the meeting recording to see what was picked up.
I did two different tests: one with music and one just spoken word.
The music rejection was good. There were occasional, very quiet hints of the Thin Lizzy track I played, but nothing that would distract listeners at the other end of a call; that was with the Alexa pumping out at maximum volume and my head 50mm from the speaker! You could probably use these at a gig and folk wouldn’t know (though I doubt you could hear what they were saying at your end). The INSIGHT 50s will be absolutely fine in generally noisy day-to-day use. I tested with and without Teams built-in noise suppression and found no appreciable difference.
With spoken word they performed somewhat less well as there was some break-through of the radio 4 monologue I selected. It wasn’t particularly distracting and that was at full volume 0.5 m away. The UCH30s do perform better, probably due to their enhanced inbuilt noise reduction algorithms and the different placement of the ambient microphone. The real test will come when my wife is on a noisy phone call in her office 8m away. I’ll report back on that in due course.
- Effective background noise reduction.
- Good microphone response with pleasant tone
- Not Teams Certified
Power and connectivity
In normal use you would keep your headphones on the dock where they will charge, however the headphones also have a USB C socket allowing them to be charged without the dock.
The headphones have an auto-power off after 10 minutes when not in use, with accompanying voice prompt and 3 flashes of the LED.
It also advises charge level when you turn them on and the usual connection status.
Connecting to both a smartphone and a PC was simple and operated as expected. Dual connection is supported. There are no additional apps or complexities (unlike some makes I could mention); nor do you have to use a dedicated dongle. They handily supply a BT adaptor should your device lack Bluetooth. All very seamless.
They have more than sufficient range; they were quite happy in my wife’s office 10m away and even remained connected 2 floors down from my home office. They claim 20m in the specifications and also that up to 8 paired devices.
Packaging and documentation
The packaging is all very professional, with some nice touches.
The small instruction leaflet has everything you need to know without having to go online to find it. I reread it for this article and found a bunch of things I had missed (including the Mute button, embarrassingly). It all appears to be recyclable as well, which I heartily approve of.
Conclusion
I like these headphones a lot. They meet all my needs for effective conferencing, especially long-term comfort. Sound quality is everything I need and noise rejection is fine (though not as impressive as the UCH30).
The controls take some learning; a lack of tactile recognition makes that a little harder than it needs to be, but I have got the hang of it now.
I really like the brandable dock; it makes me smile.
Novia Works Ltd 