2010 has seen some great new products, everything from simple Stay Stuck Pads to keep your phone safe in the car, through to the awesome Motorola TN555 Sat Nav  & Hands Free Kit, but with such a wide range of phone accessories available, which ones came out on top?

HTC Desire Car Pack

Our phone of the year does so much more than just making calls and providing internet access, it also comes in quite handy as a sat nav. The Car Pack is our most popular HTC Desire Car Holder and is perfect if you use your Desire in the car as it provides a safe and secure way to hold your phone. It also includes a car charger to ensure that you reach your destination fully charged. Car Packs are available for most current smart phones, including the iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S and HTC Desire HD.

HTC Desire Car Pack

Advanced FlexiShield Skin

FlexiShield Skins are still the most popular way to protect your phone against knocks and bumps. They’re made from a soft, flexible, energy absorbing gel and are moulded to fit your phone perfectly. The Advanced FlexiShield Skins are even better value as they also include a screen protector. View all FlexiShield Skins

FlexiShield Skins

InvisibleSHIELD Full Body Protector

If you want your phone to stay free from scratches and scuffs, but don’t want it covered up by a case, then you need an InvisibleShield. They’re a thin, flexible film that covers all of your handset and protects it against damage. They’re available for most handsets and are best suited to touchscreen phones.

InvisibleSHIELD Full Body Protector - iPhone 4

HTC CC C200 Micro USB Car Charger

HTC have had a fantastic year and have released several fantastic phones – including of course our phone of the year. With so many people now using a HTC handset, it’s no surprise that the genuine HTC Car Charger ranks as one of our top accessories of the year. What we like about this one is that it can also be used with any other USB charging cable to charge your PSP, DS, Bluetooth Headsets and any other phone that you have the cable for.

HTC CC C200 Micro USB Car Charger

Desk Genie Non-Slip Charging Desk Stand

Earlier this year, two revolutionary new products arrived – the Desk Genie and the Dash Genie. The Desk Genie has proven to be incredibly popular as it has a non slip pad that will stick to just about anything without any messing around with clips or adjustable arms.It also doubles up as a charger, USB hub and a memory card reader.

Desk Genie Non-Slip Charging Desk Stand

Cellular Line Retractable Car Charger

Car Chargers certainly aren’t the most exciting accessory in the world, but they’re certainly one of the most popular! Unlike the HTC one in seventh place, this one has a fixed charging cable that retracts when not in use, leaving your car free from trailing and tangled wires. They’re available for most phones, including Nokia, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson as well as all phones that use either Micro or Mini USB chargers.

Cellular Line Retractable Car Charger - MicroUSB

TrailBlazer Universal Car Charger and Holder

In-Car accessories really are popular and the TrailBlazer has been the most popular car holder of the year. It’s universal design means that it will hold most phones on the market, although some smart phones may be a bit too big and heavy for it. The holder plugs into your cigarette lighter and can be rotated to accommodate any controls or gear levers. What makes the TrailBlazer stand out is that it has 2 charging ports built in – a changeable one to charge your phone and a standard USB port that can be used to charge a second phone, MP3 Player or Sat Nav.

TrailBlazer Universal Car Charger and Holder

Mobile Fun Microfibre Cleaning Cloth

I was pretty surprised by this one – Who’d have thought a cleaning cloth would have been so popular! This microfibre cleaning cloth is more effective at wiping face prints off your phone than the sleeve of your jumper and it won’t scratch the display like some other cloths can.

Mobile Fun Microfibre Cleaning Cloth

Dash Genie In Car Holder

The Dash Genie is a simplified version of the Desk Genie and it well deserves second place. The holder uses a combination of a lightly adhesive pad and suction to stick to the dashboard of your car. Unlike most holders that require a totally flat surface, the Dash Genie will stick to just about any dashboard – even textured ones. Your phone is held in place using a clever sticky dot that grabs your phone firmly, without the need for adjustable arms. Just place your phone on the holder and drive off. Not convinced? Check out our video of the Dash Genie in action.

Dash Genie In Car Holder

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit – V3+

It came as no surprise to find that the Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit is the number 1 phone accessory of 2010. It’s been a firm favourite for years. This year it’s had a couple of updates and now has support for Multipoint, making it more useful than ever as you can now use it with two phones at the same time. It’s a great value solution that makes calling while you’re in the car easy, safe and legal and it thoroughly deserves it’s position as the best accessory of 2010.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit - V3+

I’ve put this guide together to run through each of the Clip and Talk Car Kits to help you choose the one that’s right for you.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit – V3

Now in it’s 3rd generation, this is the original Clip and Talk car kit. It offers extremely simple controls and can be used by anyone. Once you’ve paired the kit with your phone, it’s just one button press to answer/end calls and activate voice dialling (if your phone supports it). There are two large buttons for adjusting the volume, and a discreet mute button for times when you don’t want to be heard.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit - V3

If you’re not technically minded, don’t worry, the Clip and Talk V3 doesn’t need any installation. Setting it up involves inserting the battery, clipping the kit to your sun visor and pairing it to your phone. You’ll be up and running in less than a minute.

Battery life on the Clip and Talk is excellent, it has up to 1080 hours of stand by (that’s 45 days!) and 16 hours of talk time. This means that unlike some kits, you’re not going to have to keep it plugged in to your cigarette lighter and have cables trailing across your dashboard.

The Clip and Talk V3 can be paired with up to 8 handsets, this means that if the car is used by several people each driver can use the kit without having to pair their phone with it each time they get in the car. You can only use one phone at a time with the kit though.

This kit is best suited to those who are using a car kit for the first time or that want a simple, straight forward way to answer calls safely and legally in the car.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit – Slim And Lite

The Clip and Talk Slim & Lite is, as the name suggests, a slimmer, lighter version of the Clip and Talk. As well as the obvious size difference, the Slim & Lite also supports Multipoint. If you’ve not come across Multipoint before, it’s a way that a bluetooth device, such as a car kit, can communicate with two other devices (such as mobile phones) at the same time.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit - Slim And Lite

Uses for Multipoint vary from device to device, but in a nutshell it means that you can have 2 phones connected to the same car kit at the same time. This way, it doesn’t matter which phone rings, the call can be answered quickly and easily on the car kit.

Battery life on the Slim & Lite is almost as good, with 1000 hours stand by and 5 hours talk time. (The talk time is reduced slightly because the kit is monitoring two phones instead of one.)

Controls are similar to, and just as easy to use as the ones on the standard Clip and Talk, with one button to answer/end calls and activate voice dialling.

The Clip and Talk Slim & Lite is the perfect choice for any one who carries two phones around with them – one for work, one for personal.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit – Solar Edition

With everyone doing their bit to bring down emissions and reduce their power consumption, accessory manufacturers are looking for greener ways to power devices such as car kits.  Solar power has been making an appearance in more and more mobile phone accessories over the last year or so and car kits are the most logical accessory to make use of it – especially as they spend most of their time in your windscreen.

Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit - Solar Edition

The Clip and Talk Solar Edition is a very similar kit to the Slim & Lite, but with one big difference – a built in solar charging panel. Unlike the previous two kits that clip on to your visor, the Solar edition sticks to the inside of your windscreen and uses the power of the sun to recharge it’s battery – completely eliminating the need for a regular charger.

The kit takes 18 hours to charge using sunlight, but does come with a Micro USB car charger if you want a faster charge or are using it at night. Using solar power you get unlimited standby time and up to 13 hours talk time. Unlike the other two kits here, it doesn’t fit on your sun visor, instead uses a suction mount to place it in your windscreen.

Controls are as easy as the other two Clip and Talk car kits, and as with the Slim & Lite it supports Mulitpoint, allowing you to use two phones at the same time.

We recently reviewed this kit on the blog, if you want to see well it performed, read the Clip and Talk Solar Edition review.

Summary

In terms of call quality and usability, there isn’t much between the three kits. Personally I’d opt for the Clip and Talk Solar. Multipoint is worthwhile feature and the fact that you never need to charge it is extremely appealing as it means that the cigarette lighter is free to charge my phone or iPod. Not being mounted on the sun visor is a bonus too as it means that you can continue to use the kit (and be heard) even with the visor down.

If you’ve used any of the Clip and Talk Car Kit’s let us know what you think using the comments form below.

]]> http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/2010/02/choosing-the-best-clip-and-talk-car-kit/feed/ 0 http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/2009/10/clip-and-talk-solar-edition-review/ http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/2009/10/clip-and-talk-solar-edition-review/#comments Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:04:47 +0000 Andy Simpson http://www.mobilefun.co.uk/blog/?p=4634 Solar power has been making an appearance in more and more mobile phone accessories over the last year or so. Initially only available as stand alone Solar Powered Chargers, the technology has now found it’s way into mobile phone cases, Bluetooth Headsets and Bluetooth Car Kits.

Of all of the accessories available, Bluetooth Car Kits are the most logical accessory to make use of solar power – after all, they do spend most of their time either on your dashboard or sun visor.

Until recently there were only a couple of Solar Powered Bluetooth car kits available – the LG HFB-500 and the Drive Solar Pro. The latest car kit to join the range is the Clip & Talk Solar Edition. The Clip and Talk range has always been incredibly popular and offered great value for money, so I thought I’d put the latest addition to the Clip and Talk family to the test to see how it performs.

Clip & Talk Solar Edition:

The first thing that you notice with the Solar Edition is that it’s tiny – it’s almost half the size of the standard Clip & Talk Car Kit.  The front of the kit houses the 2 watt speaker, answer/end button and the volume controls. The back of it is the solar panel for charging the device. On the left side of the kit is the mute button, and on the other side is the micro USB charging port.

Most plug and play car kits are designed to be mounted on your sunvisor, but as the solar edition needs sunlight in order to charge, it comes with a suction holder to mount it to your windscreen.  Also included with the kit is a USB Charging cable, Car charger adapter and 2 spare suction pads.

Setting the car kit up was really simple, just slide it into the suction hold and stick it to your windscreen. Job done. I decided to charge mine initially using the USB charger, this took about an hour and a half. Once it was charged, I was ready to go and I probably wouldn’t need the car charger again as the kit charges all the time that it’s in sunlight.

Pairing the Kit:

Before I could start using the kit I had to pair it to my phone. To do this I had to put the kit into pairing mode by turning the kit off and then pressing and holding the answer button for about 10 seconds until the lights flashed red and blue. To pair my phone all I had to do then was perform a quick search for nearby Bluetooth devices.  Once I’d selected the Solar Kit I was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn’t need to enter a PIN/Passkey as my phone simply asked if I wanted to pair with the Kit. This seems to be phone dependent as some phones I tried this with were still prompted for a PIN/Passkey.

As the kit is a multipoint car kit (read our guide on “What is Multipoint?”) I wanted to test it out with two phones and in order to do this I needed to pair it to another phone. Putting the kit back into pairing mode is pretty simple, I just had to repeat the steps mentioned earlier.

Multipoint:

When a call comes through to either of the handsets, the kit should automatically connect to the phone that’s ringing and route it through the speaker.

When I first tried to make a call to one of the two connected phones (an iPhone and a Nokia 6300), I was surprised to find that the phone I was calling didn’t connect to the kit – a quick flick through the user manual soon offered a way to fix this – by default multipoint support is turned off.

I’m not really sure why Clip & Talk decided to disable it by default, but I needed to turn it on before I could use two phones with the kit. To turn it on just press and hold the + button for about 3 seconds. Once that’s done the Clip and Talk Solar kit automatically connects with the last two phones that it connected to, providing that the phones are in range.

Once I’d enabled Multipoint I found that the kit worked perfectly every time. If you need to use two phones in the car this saves a lot of messing around and once you’ve got used to it you’ll never want to go back to a non multipoint car kit.

Multipoint also worked brilliantly for outgoing calls, it didn’t matter which handset I made a call from, as soon as the kit detected a call was in progess, the audio was routed through the loud speaker.

Audio Quality:

The Clip & Talk Solar edition has a 2 watt speaker, which on paper doesn’t sound very much, but it’s plenty powerful for use in the car. I was able to hear callers with no problem at all while driving around town and on dual carriageways at speeds of up to 50mph. On motorways there is obviously more road and wind noise which makes hearing anything more difficult, having said that I was still able to hear the caller (with volume on full) at 70mph on the M6.

One thing I did notice during my road test was that it didn’t cut out – some Bluetooth devices that I’ve used in the past sometimes cut out for a fraction of a second, usually at a crucial point in a conversation, causing you to miss a punchline, phone number or other important information. I made a number of calls from both the iPhone and the 6300 as well as receiving calls on both, and didn’t experience any drop outs.

Ease of Use:

There’s nothing I hate more than a gadget with far more buttons than it needs, so when I saw that there are only 4 buttons on the Clip & Talk Solar Edition I was pleasantly surprised – having said that, most buttons have more than one function, so you’ll probably want to keep the user guide close to hand in case you forget which button does what.

On the front of the kit is the Answer/End button, volume up and volume down. The only other button is the mute button located on the left hand side.

The answer/end key has several functions – it’s used to turn the device on and off, put the kit into pairing mode, activate voice dialling and redial the last number called.

Using the kit to activate last number redial or voice dialling is pretty straight forward – especially if you’re only using one phone with it, but if like me you’re using two handsets there is a little bit more to it.

The kit won’t know which phone you want to make the call from if you just had one button for activating these features, so to make it a little clearer, one press of the answer/end key will activate voice dial and two presses will dial the  last number called for the first handset connected to the kit. Similarly one press of the volume up button activates voice dialling and two presses will dial the  last number called for the second handset connected. This of course makes it a lot easier to make sure you’re dialling the right number on the right phone – as long as you know which handset connected first. To be honest though, this didn’t cause me any problems as they’re not features that I really use in the car as I’ve never found voice dialling to be that accurate.

Summary:

I’m extremely impressed and a little bit surprised by this kit to be honest. Considering it’s price I wasn’t really expecting great things, but given that it’s multipoint, it doesn’t need charging and it’s compact size I would happily choose this kit over the more expensive Nokia HF-310 and Parrot MiniKit Slim Bluetooth Car Kits.

There are Bluetooth Car Kits (such as the standard Clip & Talk Bluetooth Car Kit) that have a few more features such as Phonebook sync, Text to Speech, caller display and FM transmitters, but you’ll pay around twice as much for them, so if you want a Plug and Play Bluetooth Car Kit that’s simple to use, works with two phones at the same time and doesn’t cost the earth – literally – then you can’t go wrong with the Clip & Talk Bluetooth Car Kit Solar Edition.

My rating: 9/10

We’ve just uploaded a new video to YouTube explaining how to pair and connect your phone to the Clip and Talk Bluetooth Car Kit V3.