Mobile Fun Blog

Choosing the Best Parrot Car Kit

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

If you frequently use your phone in the car, for music or calls, a Car Kit is an accessory worth investing in. A car kit will probably be the most expensive accessory purchase you can make for your phone, so it’s worth spending some time looking at what’s available, reading reviews and making sure that the kit you’re about to buy does everything you need it to and most importantly that it’s likely to work with your future phones too.

If you’re looking to buy a car kit, then a Parrot Car Kit is the way to go. Over the last few years, Parrot have grown from a relatively unheard of company to one that produces excellent car kits that even the big names in mobiles, such as Nokia, can’t compete with.

Parrot Car Kits come in two options, fitted and portable. Fitted car kits are hard wired into your car (normally through the stereo) and portable car kits clip on to your sun visor and rely on an internal battery for power.

This post will run through each of the current Parrot Car Kits and highlight some of their Pro’s and Con’s to help you decide on which Parrot Car Kit you should go for.

Portable Parrot Car Kits

Parrot MINIKIT SLIM Bluetooth Car Kit

If you don’t want to go to the expense of having a fully fitted kit, then the Parrot MiniKit slim is a great choice – regardless of whether you have a smart phone or a standard feature phone.  The Parrot MiniKit Slim has all the basic features of the fitted kits, but without support for streaming music. It will automatically synchronise with your phone book, allowing you to dial a contact just by saying their name. You don’t have to mess around recording voice tags as the Text to Speech software will automatically match your voice print to a name in your phone book.

The kit is designed to be mounted on your sun visor and controls are kept to a minimum – two dedicated buttons to answer/end calls and a dial to increase the volume and navigate the system menus.

Battery life on the MiniKit Slim is excellent, offering up to 20 days of standby time and 15 hours of talk time.

Parrot MINIKIT SLIM Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot MINIKIT Smart

The MiniKit Smart is the latest plug and play Parrot Car Kit. It’s been designed purely for larger smartphones, so standard sized handsets won’t really work all that well with it. Instead of clipping to your sunvisor, the MiniKit slim uses a suction pad to fix to your windscreen and combines a holder and handsfree kit. It’s receiving mixed reviews as it’s designed to hold your phone in landscape mode – perfect for sat nav, but not all smart phones can be used in landscape mode for calling and accessing the phonebook (mainly iPhones).

Parrot MINIKIT Smart

Feature wise it has everything that the MiniKit Slim has, as well as support for music streaming – although the mono speaker won’t really do your songs justice. Controls are just as simple as they are on the MiniKit Slim, but if you’re using it in portrait mode they can be a bit fiddly. The MiniKit Smart uses advanced noise reduction and a reasonably powerful (for a car kit) 2w speaker to make sure instructions are heard, but if I’m being totally honest, for the price, you’d be better off either paying the extra £10 for the Parrot MKi9000 or choosing the Jabra Cruiser and a dedicated Car Holder.

Installed Parrot Car Kits

Parrot CK3100 Advanced Bluetooth Car Kit

The Parrot CK3100 has been around for a long time now, but it’s still a firm favourite, particularly among fleet managers. In terms of features it’s pretty simple – handsfree calling with voice dial and phone book synchronisation. It has a clear LCD display that shows you the name/number of callers and allows you to scroll through your address book without having to touch your phone. Installation is pretty straight forward as the CK3100 connects using the standard ISO connections on the back of your car radio – although not all cars use ISO, so make sure you check before you buy as you may well need some additional cables.

As with all of the Parrot Car Kits, the CK3100 doesn’t use an external speaker in the passenger footwell, instead, all audio is routed through your car stereo speakers. This gives you much more control over volume levels and callers are much clearer and easier to understand.

Parrot CK3100 Advanced Bluetooth Car Kit

Parrot MKi9000 Bluetooth Car Kit

The MKi range of car kits are all based around the same basic model – the MKi9000, the only difference is the screen that ships with the kit. In the case of the MKi9000 there is no screen, but that doesn’t hamper it’s performance, especially if you’re using it with a large screen smartphone. In fact, the MKi9000 is our top selling Parrot Car Kit.

The main difference between the MKi range of kits and the CK3100 are their music capabilities. In addition to being able to handle calls, the MKi kits do a brilliant job of streaming music from your phone, MP3 player or USB flash drive through your existing Car Stereo. Controlling the Car Kit is done through a small remote that can either stick to your dashboard or attach to your steering wheel.

Each MKi kit has a connectivity cable that has a 3.5mm line in, USB port and Apple Dock connector. This allows you to connect pretty much any audio source to the kit and enjoy the sound through your car stereo. If you connect an iPod or iPhone using the Dock connector you can also use the remote to control your music playback. Every Parrot Car Kit is easily updated. Frequent software updates are available free of charge from the Parrot website and will often improve compatibility/usability.

The Parrot MKi9000 has phonebook synchronisation and advanced speech recognition built in. This allows the MKi9000 to automatically retrieve all your contacts from your phone and transfer them to it’s own internal memory. Pressing the Answer key on the remote will activate the voice dialling and you just say the name of who you want to call. No messing around recording voice tags, just say thej name and it’ll dial the number.

Parrot MKi9000 Bluetooth Car Kit

If you do have an iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, you have two options when it comes to voice dialling. You can either use the voice features of the MKi9000, or you can use the Voice Control features built into the iPhone by disabling phonebook synchronisation in the Bluetooth settings on your iPhone. I’ve chosen to use the Voice Control features on the phone purely because it allows voice control of the iPod app as well as calling. Instead of fiddling with the remote, I can just hit the answer button and say “play” and it will start playing music back – either over a bluetooth connection or through the Dock Connector. Voice Control on iPhone even allows you to tell the phone to play a particular album, playlist or artist, so if you have an iPhone and decide on a Parrot MKi Car Kit, I’d strongly recommend turning off phonebook sync.

Parrot MKi9100 Bluetooth Car Kit

There are very few differences between the MKi9000 and the MKi9100, other than the display screen. If you use a standard feature phone like the Nokia 6700 or choose not to have a car holder then this will be a much better choice. The high contrast LCD screen will show you the name and number of the caller, allows you to see the contacts in your phone book as well as see the settings for the car kit – you can still access all these on the MKi9000, but with out the screen all your options are read out to you.

Parrot MKi9100 Bluetooth Car Kit

If the idea of a screen sitting on your dashboard makes you nervous, don’t worry, it’s detachable and can be taken with you when you leave the car. In terms of features and usability, it’s very similar to the CK3100, but with music support. The MKi9100 is still worth choosing even if you don’t plan on using it for music. The £25 difference in price is minimal when you take into account the extra features that you get – easy software updates, removable screen and better phonebook sync & voice dialling.

Parrot MKi9200 Bluetooth Car Kit

The MKi9200 is significantly different to the MKi9100 and MKi9000. Most obvious is of course the screen. It comes with a 2.4 inch colour screen that will not only show names and numbers of callers, but also their photo and during music playback, album art is displayed (if present on your phone). The screen also has an SD card reader built into it. This means that instead of storing your music on your phone or USB stick, you can put all your music on an SD card (max 32GB) and have it in the car permanently.

Parrot MKi9200 Bluetooth Car Kit

Controlling the car kit is done using the same remote that comes with the other two kits, but with the bigger display, navigating the menu’s is a little bit quicker and easier. If you have use your smart phone or an iPod as your music source in the car then you may not need the extra features that you get with the MKi9200 as the MKi9000 will be more than adequate.

Parrot Unika Steering Wheel Interface for MKi Car Kits

The Unika isn’t a car kit, but a rather clever accessory that works with the MKi range of car kits to fully integrate it into your car. It allows your existing steering wheel stereo controls to operate the car kit and completely eliminates the need for the remote control. Installation is a little fiddlier, so we’d recommend having it fitted by a professional installer. You don’t need to have dedicated telephone controls on your steering wheel, as the Unika will use a combination of key presses to activate the kit. In a Ford Focus for example, pressing ‘Rewind’ then ‘Forward’ will start music playback, pressing the SRC button will answer calls and confirm menu choices and a double press of the SRC button will activate voice dialling.

To check compatibility with your car, head over to the Parrot Unika Support Pages and enter details of your Car and Parrot Car Kit.

Parrot Unika Steering Wheel Interface

Parrot Head Units

Head Unit Car Kits haven’t ever proven to be all that popular, even though the idea behind them makes perfect sense. Installation is so much easier than fitting a regular kit, not only because of the reduced wiring, but the fact that you don’t have to find space behind your dashboard to hide the control box. Parrot currently only have the RKi8400 available, and the newly announced Parrot Asteroid should be available very soon.

Parrot RKi8400 Bluetooth Car Kit

It was launched at the same time as the MKi range of kits, but the RKi8400 isn’t proving as popular as Parrot would have hoped – although that’s probably due to most cars now having a non standard sized radio in them, rather than poor performance. The RKi8400 is essentially the same as the Parrot MKi9200, as it has the same 2.4inch colour screen, multiple ways to connect your iPod, MP3 player or USB stick and an SD Card Reader. The front of the stereo pops off, not only for security reasons, but also to expose a storage area where you can leave your iPod or MP3 player connected.

Parrot RKi8400 Bluetooth Car Kit

As with the MKi Kits the RKi8400 will synchronise with your phone to give you access to your phone book and voice dialling, as well as having a full keypad on the head unit itself. The replacement for the RKI8400 has just been announced, but no launch date has been given yet. The basic idea is the same, but the Parrot Asteroid will be running the Android operating system in an attempt to make media management even easier. We’ll post more details on the Asteroid as we get them.

If you’ve got any questions about any of the kits mentioned here, feel free to ask them in the comments below. For full details on any of them, head over to the Parrot Car Kits page on the Mobile Fun site.

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Guide to choosing the right Parrot Car Kit

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Parrot have always made great car kits, and as they aren’t tied to any handset manufacturers, they tend to offer the best compatibility with phones. It’s not just top end car kits either, Parrot cater for every type of phone user with 3 different style of car kit available; Portable Car Kits, Installed Hands Free Car Kits & Installed Hands Free & Music Car Kits.

If you’re in the market for a new car kit, browsing the wide range of car kits and Bluetooth car kits that are available can be a little overwhelming as there are just so many to choose from. This guide will make choosing a Parrot car kit much easier and talk you through the differences between the 3 different types of car kit.

Parrot Car Kits, Portable, Handsfree & Music Kits

What to look for:

When choosing a car kit there are a number of factors that you should take into consideration, for example, where it’s going to be positioned, how to power it, how easy it is to use and what features do you need it to have.

Often the easiest option to install is a kit that clips onto your sun visor, but as these normally draw power from your cigarette lighter, its always good to make sure that your car has one, can be accessed easily and is not somewhere that there is a danger of the cables interfering with your ability to drive the car.

Portable units are great for low/infrequent use, but heavy phone user will probably benefit from having a fully fitted kit as they often provide better sound quality. Portable kits will have their own built in speaker and installed kits are normally routed through the speakers in your car.

You don’t want to be distracted while you’re driving either, so flashing lights and small fiddly controls should be avoided. Larger buttons and a clear display will allow you to handle your calls easily and without having to take your eyes off the road.

Phones aren’t just phones any more. A lot of us now use them as our MP3 players and would enjoy being able to listen to our music in the car through the car stereo. An increasing number of car kits can now do this, but with varying degrees of success, so check which ways you can connect your phone to the kit and make sure that your phone is compatible.

Technical Info

I’ve listed some of the main features that you’ll want to look for below, and given a brief summary as to what they actually mean. I know there’s nothing worse than staring at a list of specifications to find that it’s all abbreviations and that you have no clue what they mean!

A2DP – This means Stereo Bluetooth. Most phones now support this as standard, and if the car kit does too, it means that you can stream your music to your car kit from your phone without any wires or adapters. A2DP works regardless of your phone, so you’ll be able to carry on using the car kit for music even if you change your phone. A2DP isn’t just restricted to mobile phones either. MP3 players such as the iPod touch also support A2DP.

AVRCP – This means Audio & Video Remote Control over a Bluetooth Connection. Not all phones support this profile, so check with your manufacturer to see if your phone supports it. If it does, it means that you can press buttons on the Car Kit to change track, play/pause or adjust the volume without having to touch your phone.

Automatic Phonebook Sync – As the name suggests, with automatic sync, the names and numbers stored in your phone are automatically transferred to the car kit every time your phone is connected. This allows the Car Kit to quickly and effectively retrieve callers details for TTS and Voice Dialling.

TTS / Voice Synthesis – This means Text to Speech. The Car Kit will ‘read out’ names and phone numbers stored in your phone. It doesn’t need training and reads them out in a fairly robotic voice, but is clear and easy to understand.

User Independent Voice Recognition – Recording voice tags to your phone is a thing of the past. Car Kits with this voice recognition software match the wave print of what you say against the names stored in your phone in a similar way to how TTS works. All this is done by the car kit and not by your phone, so even if your phone doesn’t support voice dialling, you can still call someone without having to touch your phone.

Portable Hands-free Kits

The Parrot Minikit Slim & Parrot Minikit Chic are exactly the same kit in terms of technology, they’re just styled a bit differently. As the name suggests, they’re exceptionally small and thin and are designed to be used on the sun visor in your car. They have a standard Mini USB charging port, which means you can charge them in the car, at home or using your PC. Controls are simple, an answer and an end key and a rotating dial to access the car kit’s menus and phone book. Unlike most portable car kits, the Minikit Slim and Minikit Chic both support automatic phone book synchronisation.

Parrot Minikit Slim & Minikit Chic

Installed Hands-free Systems

The Parrot CK3000 Bluetooth Car Kit has been around for a number of years and as a result of it’s ease of use and unrivalled compatibility, I’d expect it to be around for a few more years too. It’s incredibly simple to use, with similar controls to those found on the Minikit. As standard all Parrot Car Kits are connected to the stereo in your car for the best possible audio quality and quicker/easier installation. Software updates for the CK3000 are available regularly from the Parrot website and are done by sending the update to the kit over Bluetooth.

Parrot CK3000 Bluetooth Car Kit

The Parrot Ck3100 LCD Bluetooth Car Kit is the CK3000′s big brother. It has the same controls but with the addition of an LCD display to show you the callers name and number as well as your phonebook entries. As with the CK3000, the CK3100 LCD connects to your car stereo and doesn’t need an external speaker.

Parrot CK3100 LCD Bluetooth Car Kit

Features list – Portable & Installed Hands-free Systems:

Features	Minikit Slim	CK3000 Evolution	CK3100 LCD
Kit Type	Portable	Installed	Installed
Screen Type	No Screen	No Screen	Monochrome LCD
Full Duplex
Echo Cancellation
Noise Reduction
Microphone	1 Built In	1 External	1 External
Sound Output	2W Vibrating Panel	Car Stereo	Car Stereo
Automatic Radio/Music Mute
Max Paired Devices	5	3	5
Upgradeable Software	Via USB	Via USB	Via Bluetooth
Automatic Phonebook Sync
User Independent Voice Dialling
Voice Tag Capacity	100	150 per phone	150 per phone
Phonebook Capacity (Per Phone)	1000	150	1000
Total Phonebook Capacity	2500	450	5000
Announced Caller ID
Photo Caller ID	NA
Phonebook Text-To-Speech
Easy Call Transfer to Phone
Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
Volume and Music Control (AVRCP)

Installed Hands-free Music Systems

There are three options available, the MKi9000, MKi9100 and the MKi9200. The main differences between them being the display screen that comes with them.  You can play music from your phone through any of the MKi Car Kits using Bluetooth or 3.5mm line in. The MKi range will synchronise with your phone book automatically and supports phone independent voice dialling. They come with a small remote that you can attach to your dash or steering wheel to control your music playback and calls.

Music is definitely at the heart of the MKi kits. As well as being able to stream music over a Bluetooth connection, each kit has an audio cable that can be used to connect a variety of audio sources to it. You can connect your Flash Drive or MP3 player to the USB Port, an MP3 or CD/DVD player to the 3.5mm headphone socket and an iPod or iPhone to the Apple Dock Connector. Devices connected via USB or Dock connector can usually be controlled fully using the remote control.

Regular software updates that improve compatibility with newer phones and MP3 Players are available regularly and free of charge from the Parrot website.

Parrot MKi9000 – This is the entry level music kit. It doesn’t come with a screen so it’s the perfect choice for people with large touchscreen phones.

Parrot MKi9100 – This has a discreet, removable OLED Screen that shows you the callers name and number, as well as information on the song that’s currently being played.

Parrot MKi9200 – This is the top end kit, it has a 2.4″ colour screen that has an SD memory card reader built into it. It can handle cards of up to 32GB, so depending on the size of your music library, you could transfer all of your music to a memory card and have it with you where ever you go. The colour screen is also used to show album art of the current track as well as photo caller ID.

Parrot MKi Bluetooth Car Kits

Parrot RKi8400 – This is the latest addition to Parrot’s line up. It has all the same features as the MKi9200 with the addition of an FM Radio, and instead of being a kit that connects to your stereo, it’s a replacement head unit for your car. It fits into any standard size car stereo slot and is extremely simple to install. The front of the stereo can be removed, and behind it you’ll find storage space for your phone or MP3 player as well as the same audio cables that you’ll find on the MKi Kits.

Parrot RKi8400 Bluetooth Car Stereo

Features list – Installed Hands-free Music Systems

Features	Parrot MKi9000	Parrot MKi9100	Parrot MKi9200	Parrot RKi8400
Screen Type	No Screen	OLED Monochrome	Colour TFT	Colour TFT
Full Duplex
Echo Cancellation
Noise Reduction
Microphone	Double External	Double External	Double External	Double External
Sound Output	Car Stereo	Car Stereo	Car Stereo	Car Stereo
Automatic Radio/Music Mute
Max Paired Devices	10	10	10	10
Upgradeable Software	Via USB	Via USB	Via USB	Via USB
Automatic Phonebook Sync
User Independent Voice Dialling
Phonebook Capacity (Per Phone)	2000	2000	2000	1000
Total Phonebook Capacity	8000	8000	8000	8000
Announced Caller ID
Photo Caller ID
Phonebook Text-To-Speech
Easy Call Transfer to Phone
Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP)
Volume and Music Control (AVRCP)
Audio Sources	Parrot MKi9000	Parrot MKi9100	Parrot MKi9200	Parrot RKi8400
iPod
iPhone
USB
3.5mm Line in
Bluetooth Stereo
SD Card
FM Radio
RCA Input
Audio Output:	Line Out Stereo	Line Out Stereo	Line Out Stereo	RCA Stereo

Once you’ve decided on your new car kit there some additional accessories that are worth looking into. The Parrot Unika is a control unit that will let you use your existing steering wheel controls to control the MKi Car Kits, eliminating the need for the remote and providing a completely integrated solution. Other accessories include Elan Mute cables for speedier installation, and Brodit ProClips and Brodit phone holders to keep your phone safe and accessible while you’re in the car.

You can find more information on these accessories on the following posts:

• How to make the most of your Fitted Car Kit
• Fully Integrate your Car Kit with the Parrot Unika
• Brodit Active Holders Vs Passive Holders

If you’ve got any questions or need any further help on deciding on a car kit use the comments form below.

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A guide to the best Professionally Installed Car Kits

Monday, September 7th, 2009

If you spend a reasonable amount of time in the car use your phone for calls, listening to music or for GPS Navigation while you’re driving, then a hands free car kit is essential.  Over recent years, the number of ‘self install’ or ‘plug and play’ car kits available has increased considerably, but while they may be a great low cost, portable solution, they can’t compete with the audio quality, ease of use and reliability of a fully installed car kit that is integrated with your vehicle.

In the earlier days of mobile phones, the King of the Car Kits was the Nokia CARK-91, almost every fleet car had one fitted but then along came Bluetooth, changing Car Kits forever. You no longer needed bulky cradles or holders attached to your dashboards, external aerials and speakers became unnecessary  and car kits started to get smarter.

Modern Bluetooth car kits can do much more than just play your calls through a speaker. Car kits can now route audio from your calls through your car stereo without the need for adapters or extra cables, play music from your phone through the stereo, store your phonebook, add voice dialling capabilities, connect to MP3 players and Sat Nav units and much more. Bluetooth car kits are more flexible too, they work with any make of handset, where as older car kits with cradles generally only work with just one manufacturer – THB car kits being the only exception to this.

To help make choosing the right professionally installed car kit a bit easier for you, I’ve been through our range of car kits and listed 5 of the best below.

Nokia CK-300

The Nokia CK-300 is a mid-range Bluetooth car kit from Nokia and with the right phone can be a very powerful accessory. All you see on your dashboard is a small remote control that has a rotating dial and 4 well spaced buttons which make it extremely easy to use. The CK-300 is designed to work best with Nokia S60 handsets (N-Series and E-Series). On it’s own, it can connect to your phone to answer and end calls, stream music in stereo over bluetooth and can also be connected to any music player that has a 3.5mm headphone socket.

Nokia CK-300 Bluetooth Car Kit

To really make the most of the kit though, you can download and install the Nokia Car Menu Application which will then make your phone an integral part of the car kit. You can use the remote control on the car kit to access pretty most of the main applications on your phone, including the phone book, email inbox, music library, Nokia Maps, call logs and settings. If your phone supports it, you can then get the car kit to read out text messages and emails while you’re driving using text to speech technology.

Installation of the car kit has been improved too. It no longer needs to be wired into the ignition of your car as a built in motion sensor will turn the kit on when the car is moving.  It’s a neater installation too as there is no external speaker on the CK-300 – it connects directly to the back of your car stereo and plays all audio through your existing speakers (Non ISO car stereos may require an extra cable). Nokia handsets with a 2mm charging port can be charged from the car kit as it has a 2mm charging cable, other handsets will need a separate car charger. If you want to know more about the CK-300 I covered this kit in detail on my post a couple of weeks ago when I wrote my guide to Nokia Car Kits.

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