A boomless Bluetooth headset can still give you good audio quality while taking up a small amount of real estate on the side of your face. For some "boomless" headsets, it's hard to distinguish them from their cousins that do have booms. The earpiece itself extends out into the main housing where the batteries and buttons are. And at the end of this housing, there's a microphone to pick up your voice. These models are technically boomless, but in effect, the housing itself functions as a boom, putting the microphone closer to your mouth.

Other headsets are more truly boomless. They conceal as much as they can of the housing behind the ear and have a microphone on the bottom end just next to or below the earlobe.

For a truly innovative design, try an earpiece that doesn't hang onto the outside of your ear at all. You can get one that looks like a small beetle perched on your ear. You twist it into place and a small spring-like extension catches and holds it in place. Users say that it can be uncomfortable if positioned wrongly; but once you get the hang of it, it works great.

You can also get a Bluetooth headset that consists of an earpiece connected by a wire to the battery and controls on a belt clip. However, it's difficult to see how this constitutes an improvement over a standard cell phone headset. For most people, the point of Bluetooth is to dispense with the wires.

As with the varieties that have booms, there's a tradeoff between longevity and size. A larger headset can allow you to talk for longer and leave the phone on standby for longer. You can get a boomless headset that offers 15 hours of talk time and 10 days of standby, but that's unusual. Most boomless headsets are designed to be far more compact, and that translates to less talk time. On average, most boomless headsets give you from 4 to 6 hours of talk time and 4 to 5 days of standby time. In return, you should expect a design that is sleek, lightweight, and comfortable to wear.

If you want a very sleek, very lightweight (less than 3/4 of an ounce) model, you can expect 2 1/2 hours of talk time and 3 days of standby. Users of such a model have testified it was so comfortable and lightweight that they even forgot they were wearing it. That's perhaps the highest praise in terms of comfort that can be given to a headset.

For a design that fits comfortably, you may prefer to look for something with a flexible ear loop. If the ear loop is not flexible, you may find that your ear is just the wrong size and shape to accommodate it. These things are designed with the average ear in mind. If your ear is smaller than average, the headset may seem too large and prone to fall off. If your ear is larger than average, a headset with an inflexible earpiece may pinch. A flexible earpiece gives you a little more, well, flexibility.

Expect a boomless Bluetooth headset to cost anywhere from $30 to $100.