Bluetooth headset review

[Guest galea]

I’ve owned three Bluetooth headsets so far. They never work right. Don’t feel comfortable on the ear, break easily, are rarely loud enough and many other annoying issues. And lets face it, you really use it when your in the car, so a visor mounted Bluetooth hands free kits sounded perfect. First off I discovered a Roadmaster VR3 on ebay and then in person in a Bell store. I since discovered Costco carry this item for $40. http://www.slashphone.com/106/5983.html

The item works fairly well. Sound quality is a bit tinny on the internal speaker but noise cancelling and the mike work well. The built in display works well and you can see the incoming call. If there is any flaw in this device it’s that it does not auto re-connect (except when you don’t want it to). One other annoying thing is that it can not be used while being charged. Charging is done by a mini USB plug Via the cigarette lighter included with the kit. All in all this unit works quite well for the price.

Next I found the Motorola T505. This unit takes the idea one step forward. It includes an FM transmitter which can then send the sound to your car’s stereo. It also supports Bluetooth Stereo (called A2DP). T505 This allows you to stream music from your phone to your car stereo. This unit works quite well, but I wish it had a display. It also charges by mini USB. The FM transmitter works well, but the power output of the device seems too low. And to make matters worse the FM band in the Toronto area is packed. Meaning finding an unused channel without cross talk was pretty much impossible. Additionally as you drive along even short distances say 1 hour or so you need to keep changing the FM channel. If there was a free FM band this would work well. The antenna for my car stereo is on the back of car and this didn’t help matters. This left the FM side of this almost unuseable. Fortunately it does have it’s own built in speaker and you don’t have to use the FM if you don’t want to. From my phone I was able to deselect using the Stereo bluetooth side of the unit and could use it only as a hands free kit.

The unit can also control Media player as well as PocketPlayer. It has a Pause/Play button as well as a forward and back button on the unit.

I brought the unit into the house and put it right next to my stereo and the unit worked well with acceptable quality further going to the point that the problem is with the output power of the device. That and the fact my antenna is in the back of car.

This unit was $119 and I bought it from PureMobile

Given I have two cars, I’ll be keeping both units, but likely not using the FM side a whole lot.

I used both of these with my HTC S710 ...