Review: BlackBerry VM-605 Handsfree Car Kit

BlackBerry have never really done much in the way of accessories for their phones, but recently they seem to be making more of an effort. Along with their recently announced HS-500 Bluetooth Headset, Blackberry have introduced the BlackBerry VisorMount Speakerphone VM-605 – a Bluetooth hands-free car kit with a built in FM transmitter, designed to make using your BlackBerry in the car easier, safer as well as letting you listen to music from your device. It’s similar in many ways to the Jabra SP700 and car kits are new territory for BlackBerry, so I thought I’d test one out to see just how good it is.

In the Box

BlackBerry seem to be keeping things quite simple with the VM-605, inside the box is just the device, car charger and a quick start user guide. There’s no mains charger and no USB charging cable either, so you’re restricted to charging it only in the car. One problem I have with this is that the charging port is on the right hand side, so if you try and charge it while it’s attached to the sun visor you’re likely to have the anti tangle cable crossing the steering wheel and blocking your view slightly, so for this reason you’ll need to remove it from the sun visor in order to charge it. Having said that, the VM-605 has a Micro USB connection, so if you’ve got a newer BlackBerry handset you’ll be able to use your existing mains charger or data cable to charge it up. Personally I’ll stick to using the car charger with my phone and charging the VM-605 in the house when it runs down.

Simple Controls

One of the first things that struck me about the VM-605 is the apparent lack of buttons on it, but when you look closely you see that it’s got just as many controls as any other car kit, but the kit is styled so that you can’t really see them. The whole of the front of the VM-605 is actually one big button and serves as the on/off, Answer/End key as well as activating last number redial and voice dialling. Given it’s size you can’t miss it, so answering calls or activating voice dialling while you’re driving couldn’t be easier.  The only other key you’re likely to need on a regular basis is the volume key, that’s mounted on the right hand side of the kit, however if you’re using the FM transmitter part of the kit, the volume controls won’t make any difference as volume is controlled by your stereo.

Styling:

The VM605 is a very slim car kit that sits almost flush against your sun visor. The mounting clip is removable so you can choose to rest the charger on your dashboard if you’d prefer, but the non slip pad on the back of the kit is small and I found that it kept sliding around the dashboard. There are 4 LED’s that glow red when the unit is in use, and at night these can be a little on the bright side, but on a positive note they don’t flash so they won’t distract you while you’re driving. As you can see from the image below, the high gloss finish is extremely reflective and in bright sunlight it makes it difficult to see if the LED’s are on. It’s a fingerprint magnet too, so you may find yourself having to wipe it down frequently.

Easy Setup

As with most current Bluetooth devices, the BlackBerry VM-605 goes straight into pairing mode the first time you turn it on. This makes pairing it to your handset really easy as you don’t have to fiddle around pressing buttons trying to figure out how to get it into pairing mode. The VM-605 also has voice prompts that tell you when the phone is in pairing mode and when pairing has been successful – a great bonus as it means you no longer need to flick through the user manual trying to figure out what the random sequence of flashing lights mean. A quick search for devices on your phone and it shows up. Tap in the PIN 0000 and you’re connected. If you’re using a BlackBerry handset you’ll be asked if you want to connect automatically – I’d always say yes to this as it means your phone will connect to the car kit every time you turn it on.

If you’re only planning on using the VM-605 as a simple handsfree unit in the car, then that’s all the set up you’ll need to do. Just clip it on your sun visor and you’re ready to start taking calls – however, that’s only half of what the VM-605 is capable of. One of it’s best features is the built in FM transmitter.

FM Transmitter

If you’ve not come across an FM transmitter before in a car kit, they basically transmit all audio from calls & music playback over FM and can be picked up by your car stereo. All you need to do is activate it on the kit and re-tune your radio. This means that instead of listening to your calls on a single, low-powered speaker, you can enjoy them through your existing car stereo speakers. This not only makes your music clearer, most car stereo’s can go much louder than a car kit meaning you’ll be able to hear your music and callers at higher speeds or on noisier road surfaces.

Setting up the FM Transmitter is surprisingly simple. To activate it, you just press the FM button on the side of the speaker and the kit will tell you the frequency that you need to tune your car stereo into in order to pick up the audio from the VM-605. When I tried mine, it started off at 88.1, but as I got some interference from a local radio station, I had to adjust it. There are two ways you can do this, you can either press the volume + key briefly and the kit will change the frequency by .1 (88.2, 88.3 etc..) but this is quite time consuming. The best way to do it is to press and hold the volume + button for a few seconds and the VM-605 will scan all frequencies to find one that is clear of any other broadcasts. Once it’s done it will again announce the frequency that you need to tune your stereo into. As a tip, I’d then recommend storing this station as one of the station presets so that you can return to it quickly and with out any fiddling around.

Once broadcasting to your stereo, the VM-605 uses RDS to display information on your stereo about what the car kit is currently doing. As you can see from the picture above, if you’re listening to music, you’ll see ‘MUSIC’, when your phone rings, the kit will call out the callers number and display ‘CALLING’. During phone calls, ‘ONLINE’ is displayed.

From the information on the BlackBerry website, I was under the impression that the kit would broadcast song information and caller-ID to the display too, but I couldn’t get it to do this, regardless of what phone I was using. I tried with a Nokia, BlackBerry and iPhone but didn’t see any additional information. It’s not the end of the world, but it would have been a nice feature to have as car kits like the Venturi Mini have been able to do this for a while.

There is one thing to bear in mind when it comes to using FM transmitters for phone calls and that is that FM transmissions are not secure and other people may be able to listen in on your phone calls. If you’re going to be making a call that needs to be private, you’ll need to just press the FM button on the side of the kit to route the audio back to the built in speaker on the VM-605.

Audio Quality

The built in speaker was powerful enough to cope with calls at pretty much all speeds. On motorways there is obviously more road and wind noise which makes hearing anything more difficult, but the VM-605 coped really well. On calls, I had no problems in hearing the caller and they had no problems in hearing me. Music playback though wasn’t so great. The built in speaker is loud enough, but as it’s a mono speaker, the music sounds a little tinny and muffled.

Hit the FM Transmitter button and turn on your car stereo and it’s a different story. Calls are clearer and louder and music play back is excellent – you wouldn’t know that you weren’t listening to a CD. I’ve tried several Bluetooth car kits and music streaming devices and found that most suffer with some degree of drop out, even if it’s just for a fraction of a second, but the VM-605 held the connection well and during my test didn’t drop out or cause the music to skip at all.

The voice that announces menu options and caller ID is worth mentioning here too.  Normally devices that speak have a very robotic sounding voice, the female voice of the VM-605 seemed very natural and not as cheesy as others I’ve tried.

Summary

Overall, I’m impressed by the VM-605. In terms of quality, it’s as good as the Jabra SP700, in fact I’d almost go as far as to say that it is the Jabra SP700, just optimised to work with BlackBerry phones – although it will work with any Bluetooth enabled phone. As good as it is, there are a couple of features that would have been nice to have considering the cost. Support for AVRCP (the ability to control music playback over Bluetooth) and as I mentioned earlier song/caller information on the radio display would be a would have been great features to have, but considering that this is BlackBerry’s first attempt at a car kit it’s a great bit of kit.

My Rating: 8/10