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This is about switching from cable-based headphones to Bluetooth-based ones and what I do think of Padmate's PaMu and PaMu Slide.
Going Bluetooth
A year ago, my dear brother gave me some Bluetooth headphones: padmate PaMu. Read his German review of PaMus.
Although I'm a big fan of avoiding additional batteries, I started to like them. The missing cable has some advantages when moving around or being in a train or on a plane. The Bluetooth connection drag is engineered down to manually selecting "connect to a previously paired device" on my Android phone.
The only downside was that I had to start using Bluetooth on my Android phone. Unfortunately, Google decided that it is a good idea to hide the activated Bluetooth icon in the notification area. I do find this horrible because I want to be notified that I forgot to disable Bluetooth in order to avoid massive tracking in retail stores and so forth.
I'm not commenting on sound quality since I never listen to music with headphones. I only listen to podcasts, talks, and miscellaneous videos. And for these applications, sound quality is usually not a thing.
PaMu Slide
Despite the fact that the headphones are still working fine, I decided to join the indiegogo campaign for PaMu Slide bluetoot headphones again by Padmate. The PaMu Slide plugs are considerable smaller and thus look less stupid when worn. A newer Bluetooth chip should avoid the manual selection task "connect to a previously paired device". The price was reasonable.
The campaign was a success, the hardware was produced and delivered quite fast. I assume the production started before the campaign.
I ordered the PaMu Slide without the wireless phone charger since I never have an issue with running out of battery of my mobile phone. The plugs do come with sensor buttons - just as my previous PaMu. This time, that are providing more features with the sensor buttons:
| Left Sensor Area | Right Sensor Area | |
|---|---|---|
| Touch once | Play/Pause/take call | Same (Play/Pause/take call) |
| Touch twice | Siri/Google/reject call | next/reject call |
| Long touch | quieter | louder |
The Bluetooth connection is optimized: no "connect to a previously paired device" any more. Thanks to some kind of strong Bluetooth link, the PaMu slide are connecting very reliable as soon as you turn them on. This comes with a price though. If you need to use the headphones on multiple different devices, it might be necessary to un-pair your PaMus from the previous device before they can be paired with a different device.
Yes, you can still use only one plug without the other, if you are in a situation where you would like to get more of your surroundings. With the old PaMus, this was only possible for the left plug which is the master.
After using the PaMu slide for a couple of weeks, I have to say that I'd rather go with a much smaller and lighter battery in the case. The old PaMu was much lighter and its battery with three to five re-charging cycles for the plugs was fine.
The PaMu slide case it still a bit bulky. The case battery is huge and I don't even know how many recharging cycles it provides yet. But this makes it heavy as well. The new PaMu Slide weights 115 gram wheras the old PaMu weights 71 gram. In my opinion, this is probably necessary for the version that provides wireless phone charging but it's a disadvantage for the version without.
Even though the old PaMu case had a nice quality, the new PaMu slide case provides an even better quality feeling.
The USB plug is now changed from Micro USB to USB-C. Since I always have to have adaptors for USB-C and Micro-USB in order to be on the safe side, this was no downside for me.
All in all, I'm happy with my PaMu Slide. When I need to pack lightly, I'll probably continue using the old PaMu. The new PaMu Slide look better and are smaller on my ears.