RIM crafts a visor speakerphone with a few surprises up its sleeve. Does it deserve the BlackBerry name? Find out in our BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone review.
Review summary of the RIM BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone:
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 The BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone isn't just a good Bluetooth speakerphone, it's one of the best ways to hold a cell phone conversation in your car. We're fans of the speakerphone form because it's more convenient and much more reliable than a Bluetooth headset. Plus, like most BT speakerphones we've tried, the BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone has excellent call quality and battery life to match. As an FM transmitter, we weren't as thrilled with the BlackBerry Speakerphone's sound quality, but we imagine the device will provide a useful bridge between the phone and the car radio. If you were already using an FM transmitter for music, and if your phone supports stereo Bluetooth, ditch your transmitter and buy the BlackBerry speakerphone. This is a device we'd easily recommend for all visors, whether or not you're sporting a BlackBerry device on your hip. Release: July 2009. Price: $80.
Pros: Slick design. Great sound quality. Easy to pair, easy to use.
Cons: Calls didn't sound as good over FM radio as they did over built-in speaker.
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Full RIM BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone Review:
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Design – Very Good
The BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone might be a little too cool looking for its own good. The sleek, tapering device seems like it would be at home on the Starship Enterprise, let alone inside our beat up, old Toyota Camry. That slimming shape kept the speakerphone inconspicuous while it was clipped to our visor. Of course, it also resembles a radar detector, so buyers in states where radar detectors are illegal might have to explain the device to curious highway patrolmen, but such is the price of cool-looking technology.
The large black space on the top of the BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone is actually a button, and it was easy and intuitive to use. Hold it to turn the speakerphone on. Hold longer to enter pairing mode. If you've paired a Bluetooth device before, there will be nothing new to learn in any of this. The BlackBerry Visor Speakerphone hides a few icons under the shiny black gloss, so you won't have to remember a morse code of flashing lights to know if the device is in pairing mode, or even turned on. It will happily tell you.
Otherwise, the BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone has a microUSB port on the side, and it uses microUSB for charging. This is a great choice, since modern BlackBerry phones ship with microUSB cords and chargers, so in addition to the car outlet plug that ships with the BlackBerry Speakerphone, you can share cords with your phone.
Sound Quality – Very Good
Where we've always found Bluetooth headsets to exhibit static and act unreliably, we've had the opposite experience with Bluetooth speakerphones, and the BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone is no exception. Sound quality on the speakerphone during calls was excellent. In fact, our callers reported our voice often sounded more clear while using the speakerphone than it did while using our handset's microphone. On our end, callers sounded great, as well.
The BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone has an FM transmitter built in, a unique feature that you can use for calls and music. When paired with a stereo Bluetooth phone, the BlackBerry Speakerphone will take your music and play it through your car's stereo. If you receive a call, the music stops and you hear your caller through your radio, instead of through the Visor Speakerphone. We tested the Visor Mount Speakerphone with the Verizon Wireless BlackBerry Pearl Flip we just reviewed, and that phone also sent spoken, turn-by-turn directions from VZ Navigator through the speakerphone over stereo Bluetooth, so we could hear them on our car speakers, though the phone wasn't smart enough to play music while the navigator wasn't talking to us.
Over our car's radio, the sound quality of the BlackBerry Visor Mount speakerphone suffered. We heard plenty of pops and other stations cutting in as the FM radio jockeyed for position amongst the other signals in our area. You can change the frequency on which the BlackBerry Speakerphone is broadcasting by holding down the volume key, and this usually helped, but even on an empty frequency our phone's music still sounded sub-par, even worse than a traditional FM radio broadcast.
Calling – Very Good
Making calls with the BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone couldn't have been easier. We didn't even have to read the instructions to figure out the process, since it was intuitive and worked like most other Bluetooth devices we've used. The BlackBerry Speakerphone even supports voice dialing, if your phone is up to the task, and with the speakerphone our BlackBerry Pearl Flip was just as reliable at interpreting our spoken requests as it was without the speakerphone.
To cut down on cables hanging down from our visor, we mostly used the BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone on its own battery power, and the device did a great job holding a charge. We got hours and hours of talking time out of the device, and after an initial charge, with moderate usage, we managed to go more than a week without having to charge the device again.
Just for BlackBerry phones?
Though RIM is calling this the "BlackBerry" Visor Mount Speakerphone, don't let the branding fool you, the device will work with any Bluetooth cell phone. We paired the speakerphone with a Palm Pre, and were able to use the speakerphone for calling and music features. While other Bluetooth speakerphones, like the BlueAnt Supertooth 3, may be available for less, with the stereo Bluetooth capabilities and the FM transmitter, we don't think the BlackBerry Visor Mount speakerphone is a bad deal at $100, and we're already seeing online retailers offering the device for pre-order at around $80.
Price and availability
The BlackBerry Visor Mount Speakerphone is available now from the ShopBlackBerry site and other online retailers for as little as $80.
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