Motorola T505 Portable Bluetooth Speaker Car Kit w/ FM Transmitter - Best mp3 speakers site, right here

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W. Woodworks “Occasional Reviewer” (Midwest) –

  

While I didn’t buy it on Amazon, I thought I’d post here, for all to see. Ripped open the package, pressed the on button, sync’d with my phone, made a couple calls using the built in speaker phone. Plenty loud, but was not actualy driving, so it was very quiet in the car. Turned on the car, tuned the radio to the station that the polite slightly British accented voice told me to and made a few calls utilising the car stereo. If you haven’t done this yet (with other devices), it is a thrill, you can make the voice as loud as you need to, it’s perfectly clear, people can hear you loud and clear. I specifically chose this one because it’s made to clip to your visor, so you have the microphone as close as you are going to get to your mouth without wearing a headset, so people don’t complain that you sound “far away”. Then for the real reason I bought this… I fired up the music on my phone. First a rush, holy cow it works, then disappointment the sound quality was not great, flipped through a couple songs and it was mediocre at best, I was bummed… THEN I got to Annie Lennox CD I had on my phone WOW! great sound, kept listening, got to a few other CD’s… Really, really great sound from my factory stereo (Caveat – I’m completely over my “audiophile” days so take what I think of as great sound with a grain of salt). So, the crappy sound was MY music, must have been low bitrate MP3′s, all this thing did was point that out to me all too clearly! Then – incoming call interrupts my listening, press the button, works like a charm. After the call, it doesn’t automatically restart the tunes, I have to hit play on the media player. Also to make life a little safer in the car, I have the phone cradled in a made to fit my phone (HTC Mogul) cradle by ProClipUSA so the phone is always facing me and just as easy to touch buttons on as my radio. The funny thing is, I’m not a road warrior – 20-30min each way to and from work, maybe 1-2 hours a week travelling during work. Some of you are saying it wasn’t truly zero config because I had to pair the bluetooth with my phone, you may be right, but for me zero config is when I don’t have to bust out the instructions. Oh the other “Zero config” item I got this week? Creative’s wireless X-mod. Again, never cracked the instructions, tore open the boxes and plugged the units in.

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R. Avital “R_Avital” (Merrimack, NH USA) –

  

This device worked for me as advertised, out of the box, no issues. It does what the description says it will do, and does it well:

* Connect with your phone via bluetooth
* Play music out of your phone (if your phone is capable) and phone conversations via the built-in speaker
* Has volume control for the speaker
* Transmits whatever your phone is giving you (phone conversation or music) to your FM radio
* Next/previous track control when streaming music
* Allow you to use your phone’s voice commands – again, if your phone is capable
* Announces caller ID for incoming call
* Speaker volume is adjustable
* Allows you to accept or reject calls based on caller ID
* Automatic last-number redial
* Mounting on visor puts the microphone close enough to your mouth that the other party hears you very clearly.
* Clear, concise manual

Some limitations are entirely a matter of the functionality of your phone, and are the result of the kind of interfaces your phone allows. Example: On my LG-Vu (CU920), you can have the phone play MP3 music, and the T505 will stream it to your FM radio. The phone allows you to “minimize” the player on the phone’s screen so you can access other functions, like make a call. Now bear in mind, that to make a call, you have to pause the music-playing function. If you then go to the voice-command screen, the minimized music player disappears, and you have to re-start it after you’re finished with the call, if you want to go back to playing music. The spot where you paused, of course, will be lost.

BUT – If you have your music player minimized, and a call comes in, you can pause the music and answer the incoming call, without losing the minimized music player, and when you hang up, you can go back to it and play from the paused location.

Well, that’s what the phone is capable of, so that’s what the Motorola T505 will let you do. So if I’m streaming music, and I need to make a call, I press a button on the Motorola device to pause the music, another button to make the call, same button to hang up, and then I need to fiddle with the phone to get back to playing music.

Minor issues:
* When you need to flip the visor, the microphone will be facing away from you, but the device can be mounted or double-taped anywhere else in the car
* Comes with a car charger (cigarette lighter plug) only, wall-outlet charger sold separately, and if you charge the device in the car, better take it off the visor or the cable will stretch from your cigarette lighter to your visor

A serious caveat: I wish I had known this before buying it, so I’ll share it here: The “Station Finder” function for the best FM frequency on which to transmit, is a serious design flaw. When you turn it on, a friendly female voice announces a frequency that the gizmo estimates is the best one. Sure enough, tune your FM radio to that frequency, and try to make a call, it will stream to the radio flawlessly. However, it turns itself off after 10 minutes of idle time (nothing transmitting), to save power. That’s fine. When you need it back on – say to make a call or answer an incoming call – well, you’ve traveled a bit in the last 10 minutes or more, and whatever the gizmo “thinks” is the best frequency is likely different than the previous one. Which forces you to re-tune your FM radio – which defeats the entire concept of “hands free,” doesn’t it?

Announcing the frequency by voice, rather than a power-consuming backlit LCD is a very nice idea, but I wish I had been allowed to SET the frequency myself and keep it where I set it. You can, according to the manual, make whatever current frequency was picked as a “preferred” station, which is given preference when the gizmo tries to scan for suitable frequencies, but there’s no guarantee it will be kept.

For now, this is not a major issue for me yet, but man, what a way to mess up a killer product!

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This was recommended on a news station where they’d done a review of similar items. I purchased it as a birthday present for my son. A risky thing to do for someone so picky. He loved it! It clips on his visor and somehow comes over his car radio, without wiring. The radio plays and when a call comes through it tells him the number, he pushes the button to answer. It’s an excellent buy for the money.

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