When choosing a Bluetooth Car Kit, its easy to become overwhelmed by the vast range of Car Kits available. They all look the similar, they do the same basic job, so what’s the difference and what should you be looking for when choosing a Bluetooth Car Kit?
Fitted or Portable:
Bluetooth Car Kits are generally available in two different formats – Fully Fitted or Plug and Play. By Plug and Play I mean they are normally powered by your cigarette lighter and clip onto your sun visor. Fitted Car Kits require professional installation, and have better audio quality and extra features over Plug and Play kits. Having said that, the quality of Plug and Play kits has improved significantly over the last few years and they are now proving to be a good alternative to the Fully Fitted Car Kit. Plug and Play kits can easily be transferred between vehicles and can be used in the home or office.
Caller Display:
I’m sure we’ve all had it happen us, you’re driving along, phone’s in your pocket, starts ringing, you answer it and immediately wish you hadn’t as you’ve been avoiding the caller! With a Bluetooth Car Kit with caller display, the callers name or number will be displayed on screen so you’ll know straight away who it is. If you decide to go for a Bluetooth Car Kit with Caller Display, look out for one that has Phonebook Synchronisation or Text to voice. More on these two below. Fully fitted kits don’t normally have a screen, but it is worth paying a little extra to go for one with a screen. If you can, look for a kit with a removable screen (eg; Parrot MKi9100) this will remove any temptation to thieves as you can take it out of the car when you leave.
Phonebook Synchronisation:
Phonebook Synchronisation is all about making calls easier while you’re driving. When you pair your phone with the kit, your phonebook will be transferred to the Car Kit. It does depend to some extent on your phone as to how well this will work, but it means you can call someone without having to scroll through the contacts on your phone. Bigger buttons and a clearer screen make this a much safer way of looking through your contacts.
Voice Features:
Voice Dialling has been around for a while, but always with varied success, and again depended greatly on the phone that you were using. With most current Bluetooth Car Kits, the voice dialling is controlled by the Car Kit and not the phone. Without getting overly technical, the car kit matches your voiceprint to the name in your phonebook, and then sends the number to the phone – this is great as it means that some phones that don’t support voice dialling can now be controlled by voice in the car.
You no longer need to record "voice tags" for each name in your phone book either. Instead, you just say the name, and the voice recognition software will match your voiceprint to the name in your phone. If the kit supports text to voice, the kit will speak the callers name as well as displaying it on the screen. In most cases, you will still need to make at least one button press to activate the voice recognition.
Multipoint:
Multipoint is a relatively new technology in Bluetooth Car Kits. Standard Bluetooth Car Kits normally allow you to pair with 2 or more phones, but only one can be active at any one time. Multipoint Bluetooth Car Kits allow you to connect and use two phones at the same time – ideal if you carry a work mobile and a personal mobile. With Multipoint, both phones are connected, and when a call comes in, the audio is transferred to the Car Kit automatically. If a call comes in on your second phone, you can easily switch between calls, just by pressing a button on the Car Kit.
For more information on Multipoint and how it works, check out our guide to Multipoint.
Power:
Fully fitted Car Kits are wired into the vehicles power supply, so you don’t really need to worry about how the kit is powered, but if you want a kit that will charge your phone while its in the cradle then your options will be limited to the THB Bury range. When Car Kits changed from having cable connections to Bluetooth a few years ago, most manufacturers removed the cradle from the kit. This means that the only way to charge your phone will be to use a car charger, or a Charging Car Cradle.
Plug & Play Car Kits aren’t wired in to the vehicle so will run off their own internal battery. This battery can normally be charged using a car charger. Some will also have a mains or USB charger too. If you want to charge a phone and Bluetooth Car Kit at the same time its probably worth investing in a twin car charger adapter.
Battery Life:
Battery life is an important factor to consider when looking at Plug & Play Bluetooth Car Kits. As you’re likely to have the unit turned on when ever you’re driving, you need a good stand by time. There’s not much point in it having great talk times if the kit runs out of power half way through a journey.
Over the last few months we’ve seen a few Solar Powered Bluetooth Car Kits appear. These use the power from the sun to extend their stand by and talk times. The LG HFB-500 for example has over 1100 hours of stand by time.
More and more of us now use our phones as MP3 players and want to be able to enjoy our music in the car. Until recently this wasn’t really all that possible, but things are starting to improve.
Fully Fitted Bluetooth Car Kits:
If you want to stream your music over a Bluetooth connection, you’ll need to make sure that your phone and the Car Kit supports the A2DP Bluetooth Profile – without it, you won’t be able to send/receive music. If you don’t want to listen to it over Bluetooth, kits such as the Parrot MKi range, give you the option of plugging in your iPod, USB MP3 Player or any other music device (including your phone) using a 3.5mm Jack Plug fitting – the same as you’d find on your headphones. You’ll also need to make sure that the Car Kit is connected to your car stereo. Generally speaking if the Car Kit has "ISO Connections" (most of the newer kits do) it will plug straight into the back of your Car stereo – All Parrot Car kits, IO Play and the CK-300 from Nokia have ISO connections. If it hasn’t got ISO, its not really designed for music. You may need an adapter cable for your stereo as not all stereos have ISO connections.
Plug & Play Bluetooth Car Kits:
Plug & Play kits don’t have the ability to connect to the back of stereos, so instead they use an FM Transmitter to send music to your stereo. Kits such as the Venturi Mini let you stream your music over Bluetooth to the kit, and then over FM from the kit to the radio. You can use a 3.5mm line in jack if you prefer or you don’t have Bluetooth.
If you don’t necessarily want music to play back through your car stereo, but you do want your call audio routing through the car speakers then this is still an option. The Venturi and the Motorola T505 both have the ability to route your call audio through your stereo speakers. Perfect if you spend a lot of time on the motorway or drive a van!
Remote Control:
Not really so relevant for Plug & Play Bluetooth Car Kits, as they are essentially remote controls for your phone anyway, but if you’re looking at a fully fitted Bluetooth Car Kit, remote controls make using it a lot simpler. Basic kits will have a simple answer/end button, but if you want more control, look for a kit with a full remote. The Parrot MKi range and the Nokia CK-300 both feature remotes that can be used to control music playback, phonebook access, call/music volume and more.