[masraum]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

I don't do boom mics.

It's just too much "that headset guy" for me.

My BIL uses one, all the time, if you knew him you'd understand.

I like stuff that is not as obvious.

I get it. I was like that for a long time. I bought it for work exclusively (to use when I was in the office with my desk phone). It had 7 hours of talk time which was about double the talk time of the headset that was provided by the company, and the audio was better.

I think that without a boom mic (to keep the mic close to your mouth) or without something pretty advanced (like the boomless multi-mic setup on the big headphones) you're going to continue to have the same problem on phone calls. If the mic isn't close to your mouth and somewhat directional, then it's going to have to be sensitive and will therefore pick up more background noise. The only way you might get better performance is with something that has decent noise cancellation because it's got multiple mics (The headset with the boom mic has something like 3 or 4 microphones with some being dedicated to listening to ambient for cancellation purposes)