Review - Blueant Interphone

Hi all, don't know if this will be of use to anyone but it gives me an excuse to ramble a little.
While I was sat bikeless after an off waiting for insurance settlement I was reading many magazines and saw the blueant interphone headset mentioned in several of them glowing reports etc, sounded ideal to me being a gadget lover but the £149 price put me off, somewhere along the lines I was pointed to a link to a seller on ebay selling a pair of them for £142! I was very interested in the pair as I want to try bike to bike mode of them with my step son who has now taken up my CBR125 so I put my cash down and waited......... what is that old addage about if something looks to good to be true?

Surprisingly though they turned up and HM customs only charged me VAT on the bid price so that was £10, parcelfarce then charged their £8 for "administrative fees"..... and I thought **** turpin was dead anyway, £18 well spent to spring them from the hoosegow, couldn't wait to get home after now picking up my new bike, fitted it to my helmet, i decided to cut a small hole in the fabric to make routing the cable to the main unit/control on the outside of the helmet easier, I need to replace the helmet anyway so I thought nothing lost, put that on, removed the cheekpad and put the earpiece and mic around the inside, fitted perfectly, very neat. (even for a numpty such as myself)

read through the dreaded instructions (I had to OK? there was only 1 button! gotta know the secret handshake for things like that) anyway, quick and easy to pair it, works a charm with my Nokia N80 phone, voice dialling is usually pretty darn reliable at anything below 50, I think it only gets dodgy above that because of user error, shouting to compensate for the wind noise but the mic can hear me perfectly well of course.

I tried it to work a couple of times with music playing from my phone too, excellent, works well, but because it adjusts to speed (via wind noise) it turns up to counteract it and overwhelms your ears if you don't have earplugs in, fortunately I grabbed some today and gave it another go with them in, set the unit to high volume mode and off i went, works ideally through the earplugs, music was easy to listen to up and above 70 (tested on my really really long driveway of course) the volume counteraction was spot on with the earplugs, and caller quality is excellent, its hard for people i'm calling to tell i'm riding, next to no wind noise and bluetooth ability is great.

I have had a short opportunity to test pairing the two units but only as rider to pillion so no news on range yet although its quoted at 150m which isn't bad in my opinion, but rider to pillion is great, was using it without earplugs at the time so over 50 the wind noise got a bit excessive but i'm sure with earplugs it would be perfectly fine. and because they are full duplex there is no voice activation so they are always live, but you don't get wind noise either so I'd say its the best method for conversation rather than voice activation where wind noise can take over the transmission.

I gave it a full charge the night I got it and have been using it for 3 weeks now 20-30 mins on the way to work (mostly in standby but with 10 mins of calls per week maybe) and around 50 mins of music and the battery isn't showing any signs of flattening,
the specs quote:
600 hours standby
10 hours talktime (phone)
5 hours intercom time


the controls to operate the unit are small enough to not be a hinderence on your helmet but big enough to easily and confidently operate with gloves on in motion, one button answer (or voice answer if you so desire) hit the button once whilst listening to music or in standby mode and it kicks the voice dial option into listening for your command, say a name at it from your phone book and it (I think this is mostly the phone side of things now) repeats the name it thinks you said and dials (gives you a bit of peace of mind that you aren't dialling someone completely different from the intended) and thats it, to hang up (or indeed to actively reject a call) you just hold the button for a fraction longer.

you can change between intercom and phone usage on the fly too, hold the button for 3 seconds and it swaps pairings, as the instructions helpfully point out you won't hear your phone when in intercom mode but have it set to vibrate and you can swap if the call is that important.

there are two large volume buttons top and bottom for up and down, my only gripe is that i'm always worried about pressing one and forcing the clip to the helmet so i can end up pressing both at the same time sometimes, but this can't be avoided really. all in all a rather intuitive and exceedingly well thought out interface.

In theory seeing as my PDA has bluetooth I should be able to get the audio from tomtom through my headset too which would be handy, probably similar for tomtom etc. just haven't had chance to test this one yet.

anyway, rambling aplenty (sorry) highly recommended product if you need /want wireless communication, i'm sure there are competitive products but haven't seen many mentioned and this caught my eye (and imagination)
the RRP seems a little high but after using it does seem well worth it, but if you can get them at anything reduced then they are definitely a bargain. so handy.

obviously as with anything that can distract you whilst out and about these products are great but need to be used with a good helping of common sense. With that in mind though I wouldn't like to be without mine now, being able to give a quick shout back to my wife to inform her of change of plans etc is a big plus. and the intercom is invaluable if you can afford two of them.

Thanks for listening, sorry for the long winded approach but if you have any questions let me know.