Travel Technology - Bluetooth Hands-free Speakerphone for Car

I've decided its time to bring my old truck into the 21st century and equip it with a hands-free speakerphone, bluetooth variety.

The choices have been narrowed down to the Jabra Freeway and Motorola Cruiser 2. Both are well reviewed, and the positives and negatives seem similar.

Has anyone here compared the two directly? Any negative experiences with either? Are there models I should check out that I may not have fully appreciated?

Thanks.

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Huh?

You may be interested in purchasing a car stereo which includes Bluetooth capabilities. Not only will you have a more integrated BT system (you get a wired microphone you can mount anywhere in the vehicle) but also more music functionality (iPod, satellite radio, etc). For $200-300 you can get a nicely featured unit for your truck. If you are inclined, they usually are not hard to install.

That's a possibility, but I've ripped the dash out of my truck once already to install an aux input for my old iRiver h120 MP3 player (long since replaced with an iPod Touch). I don't relish the thought of doing that again :)

The simplicity and portability of the dedicated speakerphone is attractive as I also occasionally rent a car for regional trips and few of them are Bluetooth equipped.

The Jabara Freeway goes for $114 on Amazon. Why would you buy something that expensive when there are cheaper options?

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Bluetooth-Portable-Speaker-Packaging/dp/B002TZFEKU/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1339932478&sr=8-4&keywords=motorola+bluetooth+car+kit I bought this one for a friend and she has no complaints about it.

The Jabara Freeway goes for $114 on Amazon. Why would you buy something that expensive when there are cheaper options?

http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Bluetooth-Portable-Speaker-Packaging/dp/B002TZFEKU/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1339932478&sr=8-4&keywords=motorola+bluetooth+car+kit I bought this one for a friend and she has no complaints about it.

I haven't bought the Jabra Freeway, at least yet.

Features vary, and the two I've selected are equipped with those that I need. Most important are:



Ability to pair with two phones simultaneously
Sufficient volume to work in a noisier vehicle (a Chevy Silverado in my case)
Very good noise cancellation
Some sort of SMS/email to speech (and vice versa) capability


The Freeway offers a very strong feature set, but appears to be weaker in the noise cancellation department. I'm leaning toward the Motorola Roadster 2 with its superior noise cancellation because of that, and it has enough of the remaining features to satisfy my needs.

Thanks for your input.

I haven't bought the Jabra Freeway, at least yet.

Features vary, and the two I've selected are equipped with those that I need. Most important are:



Ability to pair with two phones simultaneously
Sufficient volume to work in a noisier vehicle (a Chevy Silverado in my case)
Very good noise cancellation
Some sort of SMS/email to speech (and vice versa) capability


The Freeway offers a very strong feature set, but appears to be weaker in the noise cancellation department. I'm leaning toward the Motorola Roadster 2 with its superior noise cancellation because of that, and it has enough of the remaining features to satisfy my needs.

Thanks for your input.

Oh, the one I posted has no of those features. I thought you were looking at car kit just to make and receive calls.

Oh, the one I posted has no of those features. I thought you were looking at car kit just to make and receive calls.

Well, that is the primary reason, but I probably should have clarified both the driving environment and my communications needs up-front. I carry two phones; a blackberry for work and a Razr MAXX for personal use. My truck is used primarily for personal travel, but I spend an hour or so on the road regularly, traveling between my primary and secondary (vacation) residences.

The bulk of my travel for business is done within northern New England, from the central coast region of Maine to central Massachusetts. For those trips I rent a car, as they're usually 150+ miles each way. Noise cancellation isn't as much an issue with the rentals, but the 2-phone requirement is still there :)

Ability to pair with two phones simultaneously
Sufficient volume to work in a noisier vehicle (a Chevy Silverado in my case)
Very good noise cancellation
Some sort of SMS/email to speech (and vice versa) capability



I have an Eclipse AVN-2210p in one of my cars, installed after trying various BT options. It is a far superior device for making calls while on the move at high speed. It has all the above, just the SMS -> speech is a bit quiet, however the text appears on the screen (Nokia Lumia 800 - this SMS -> speech + text doesn't work with IP4).

The other benefit is that your contact list is transferred to the car, so far easier and safer (or at least less distracting) to initiate calls from a large touchscreen.

You may be interested in purchasing a car stereo which includes Bluetooth capabilities

I have an Eclipse AVN-2210p in one of my cars, installed after trying various BT options. It is a far superior device for making calls while on the move at high speed. It has all the above, just the SMS -> speech is a bit quiet, however the text appears on the screen (Nokia Lumia 800 - this SMS -> speech + text doesn't work with IP4).

The other benefit is that your contact list is transferred to the car, so far easier and safer (or at least less distracting) to initiate calls from a large touchscreen.

Unfortunately, it no longer appears to be in production. And it appears to require significantly more installation than either of my original choices. A bit pricier, too :)

I've used the Freeway quite a bit with rentals that don't have BT (or that have no manual and a non-obvious pairing procedure), and it has served me well. Never had a complaint about audio quality. It has excellent battery life, uses a motion sensor to put itself to sleep, and it is the loudest visor/type device I have used. In Montana and Colorado, I've ended up with a Jeep Wrangler a few times, the cabin of that vehicle demands a loud device and the Jabra was more than adequate. I have been in a vehicle when the Moto was in use, I'd say the incoming quality was similar, but I believe the Jabra has louder output volume. Can't speak to the outbound call quality. The Jabra has been on sale at Best Buy a few times, so if you can wait, you are likely to see it < $100 US again.

Cheers.

I've used the Freeway quite a bit with rentals that don't have BT (or that have no manual and a non-obvious pairing procedure), and it has served me well. Never had a complaint about audio quality. It has excellent battery life, uses a motion sensor to put itself to sleep, and it is the loudest visor/type device I have used. In Montana and Colorado, I've ended up with a Jeep Wrangler a few times, the cabin of that vehicle demands a loud device and the Jabra was more than adequate. I have been in a vehicle when the Moto was in use, I'd say the incoming quality was similar, but I believe the Jabra has louder output volume. Can't speak to the outbound call quality. The Jabra has been on sale at Best Buy a few times, so if you can wait, you are likely to see it < $100 US again.

Cheers.


If you don't mind an open box item, you can get the Freeway for $54.99

http://www.n1wireless.com/Bluetooth_Car_kits-Jabra_FREEWAY_Bluetooth_In-Car_Speakerphone.html#.T98s4PXCQXk

If you don't mind an open box item, you can get the Freeway for $54.99

http://www.n1wireless.com/Bluetooth_Car_kits-Jabra_FREEWAY_Bluetooth_In-Car_Speakerphone.html#.T98s4PXCQXk

I've had mixed results with open box stuff; I generally go with new for that reason. Had I not already ordered the Motorola Roadster 2 late last night, though, I might've taken a chance on this.

If the Moto device doesn't work out, I'll give N1Wireless a shot. Thanks for the link!

FWIW, I've been using the motorola roadster (although I don't think it's the 2 version), and for the most part I've been satisfied with it. Voice quality is decent enough, and I can crank the volume up enough that I've never had a problem hearing it. I do find that I can't use the transmit to the radio part, I can never seem to get a clear signal to the radio when I do that (but quite honestly, over the years, I've *never* been able to get an fm transmit to the radio device to work adequately).

Never tried the text message reading capability, I don't believe in text messages :).

Well, the Roadster 2 arrived a day early, and so far I'm entirely unimpressed. The sound quality is just ok, and plenty loud enough, and the folks on the other end of the call seem to have no complaints. But . . .

The FM feature is almost useless. Too much static, and not a significant improvement over the included 2 watt speaker. The "My Motospeak" app for Android is unpredictable; you can't just hit the voice dial button on the Roadster 2 and expect something useful to happen.

It seems to work ok with what limited functionality is available with the blackberry, excepting of course the poor FM quality.

For $75, I expect more. I'll be trying the Jabra Freeway next.

An update:

Over the weekend I upgraded my Razr MAXX to ICS 4.0.4 . . . quite a challenge, since I had rooted my phone and deleted a lot of the VZW bloatware. With ICS, the MotoSpeak application seems to run much faster and so far seems to work reliably. I'm still disappointed in the Roadster 2's FM radio functionality, but that just may be the radio in my truck.

I'm taking a rental car down to the Boston area tomorrow and will see if a different radio offers improved sound. If it doesn't, I'll be checking out the Jabra Freeway.

And on an somewhat related topic: ICS is pretty great :D

Another basic audio streaming with controls which I use is A2DP and AVRCP is with controls. If you change your source to BT, you can switch songs in Google music app.