I looked in particular for how clear and crisp my voice was and whether the mic picked up too much background noise (such as a noisy air purifier, keyboard typing, or people talking in the background). Microphone quality: Since call quality is paramount for an office headset, I made several vocal recordings to test microphone quality.The vocal recordings from all of the headsets we tested sounded noticeably compressed (the range between the softest and loudest sounds is lessened, making the voice sound flatter) compared with what you get using an external microphone (which is what you should get if you need to record audio for podcasts or similarly polished recordings). Just keep in mind that these headsets are designed for phone calls, not professional audio production. So if you’re currently using a set of regular mic-equipped earbuds or headphones for daily calls with colleagues or clients, upgrading to a headset can provide a tangible improvement in how well you’re heard and understood by people on the other end of the line. Every headset we tested, for example, did better in our speech-to-text dictation tests than our pick for best noise-cancelling headphones, the Bose 700. Headsets with boom mics significantly outperform earbuds and regular headphones with built-in mics in accurately capturing speech, as well.