Iqua 603 Sun Bluetooth headset

The Iqua 603 Sun is, we're told, the first solar-powered Bluetooth headset. You might think this would mean the device has to be big enough to capture the light – but it’s not.

It is very compact and instead of hooking around the wearer's ear, it comes with two ear buds in different sizes. Although this makes the device look a bit nicer it didn’t really help with comfort: it kept falling out of our ears, meaning we had to hold it in, which somewhat defeated the point of it being hands-free.

The 603 Sun recharges using a small solar panel that sits across its front and we were impressed to find that this worked. Leaving it on standby for a few hours in sunlight gave us just over five hours of talk time.

Sound through the device was clear; we were able to hear people without any problems and our callers said they were able to hear us too. However there were times, when background noise was louder than normal, that sound through the device became muffled.

The Iqua 603 Sun is a good-quality inexpensive headset, but it was let down by its poor ergonomics.