About a week ago, I was able to get my hands on a BlueAnt S1 Handsfree Sun Visor Bluetooth Speakerphone. After giving the BlueAnt Q1 Bluetooth Headset a try, I was really interested in this handsfree solution. I really wanted to give it a try with Sprint Navigation, which I think is a great app, and see how much better the speaker is on the S1 than what is on my Palm Pre.
Features and Specifications
The BlueAnt S1 is a handsfree device that hooks to the sun visor in your car. The S1 supports Bluetooth v2.0 and has a cover of up to 10 meters. The S1 contains a rechargeable lithium ion battery and has a talk time of 15 hours and 800 hours of standby.
All the buttons for the S1 are located on the top. The green button is the multifunction button, and is used for the following: S1's power (on/off), pairing, answering calls, voice dialing, redialing, and transferring audio. The red button ends and rejects calls, the volume rocker that is located in between the the two. Below is a summary of features that the BlueAnt S1 offers.
Summary of Features:
- Talk handsfree on your phone while driving
- Use your voice to answer calls
- Multipoint: connect to 2 phones and answer the one that rings
- Use your voice to make calls (if support by your phone)
- Stream music from A2DP Bluetooth phones
- Easy installation: clips onto your sun visor
- Digital Signal Processor for noise and echo cancellation
- Automatically reconnects to your phone when you get back into the car
- Stores pairing information for up to 8 phones
- Up to 15 hours of talk time and a massive 800 hours of standby time
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Comes complete with BlueAnt's 2 year warranty
General Specifications:
- Bluetooth v2.0
- Up to 10 meters coverage
- Headset Profile, Handsfree profile with automatic detection
- Frequency: 2.4 GHz
- Battery Type: Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery
- Charge Time: 3 hrs
- Dimensions: 64 x 120 x 21 mm
Package Contents:
- S1 Handsfree
- 1 x AC Wall Charger
- 1 x Visor Clip
- 1 x Quick Start Guide
- Warranty Card
In Use
The S1 was very easy to pair with my Palm Pre. The Pre recognized the S1 immediately and the pairing process was very short. Once the two devices were paired, I attached the S1 to my sun visor and went about my day as normal.
The first thing that I tried with the S1 was Sprint Navigation. That is the main reason why I wanted to try this device out. Using the S1 definitely makes it a lot easier to hear the turn-by-turn navigation while either listening to music on the car stereo or driving with the window down. Of course I don't drive that often with the window down, since it's usually over 100 degrees down here, but I figured I would give it a try and report. There definitely is no comparision between the built-in speaker on the the Palm Pre and the S1. The clarity and volume levels on the S1 are so much better than the speaker on the Pre.
The S1 allows you to answer calls without touching your phone. You can simply say answer or OK and call is picked up. This is a nice feature and makes answering calls very easy and convenient.
The call quality of the S1 is good. The noise cancellation of the S1 is not nearly as good as the Q1 headset, but it's definitely not too shabby. The callers on the other end had no issues hearing my voice but did hear some wind noise while driving about 60mph. Of course this is not an issue for me, since I rarely drive with the window down, but it's definitely something to test. On my end, I was able to hear the caller easily with the window down. The speaker on the S1 is very loud and clear. I ran the same test using the speakerphone on my Palm Pre and the S1 out-perform it with no question.
As noted before, the S1 has the capabilities to stream music from A2DP Bluetooth phones. This is a nice feature, but definitely will not replace your car stereo system. The speaker on the S1 is loud and clear, but since it's just one speaker the music may not sound as full as it should. This is a good option if your car does not have a music player adapter.
Other features of the S1 that I really liked are the ability to pair up to eight devices, last number redial, the ability to transfer calls from the phone to the speakerphone and vice versa, and automatic reconnection. The automatic reconnection means that the S1 will automatically search for your phone and reconnect when you bring the phone back in range.
Conclusion
I really like the BlueAnt S1 and can recommend it to anyone that would like a car speakerphone. The S1 has good call quality and a lot of nice features for a very low price. It definitely worked out great for me and I plan to use it a lot with my Sprint Navigation services on my Palm Pre. The BlueAnt S1 is $59.95 in the Mobility Today Store.
About BlueAnt Wireless
Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, and with offices in San Francisco and London, BlueAnt Wireless is a market leading designer and distributor of Bluetooth devices and accessories. BlueAnt's product portfolio includes the world's first voice controlled Bluetooth headset, sophisticated car speakerphones with multipoint and text to speech technology, and stereo audio speakers.
The Bluetooth ® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use such marks by BlueAnt Wireless is under license.
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