The well-connected electronics fan has always appreciated the convenience of hands-free phone kits. If you live in certain states or cities, though, you may very well find that they're no longer a convenience, but a necessity. To avoid getting fined, you'll have to use one while driving.
The newer generation of Bluetooth kits offer much more than just a safer (though not everyone is convinced that hands-free phone use will prevent accidents-see the sidebar) way to chat it up on the road. For devices that do Bluetooth music streaming, it's a seamless way to bring your music everywhere you go-no cables attached!
We tried out a variety of Bluetooth solutions this month. Here's what we thought.
Pioneer CD-BTB200 $180
Adapters designed to function with the same maker's head units offer a seamless interface, and the CD-BTB200 for Pioneer is no exception. The black box installs easily in comparison to some stand-alone kits and you can mount the microphone wherever it strikes your fancy (we ran it to an approved locale at the top of the steering column). Initial syncing with our Motorola SLVR took only seconds. Why so quick? Because it doesn't load the phone book initially, a boon if you lack patience and don't want all your contacts anyway. But if you have to have all those numbers at your fingertips, the one-by-one transfer to the unit will prove tedious.
How you use the features will vary depending on your head unit, but the CD-BTB200's basic functions remain the same. The GUI that popped up on the AVIC-D3 source unit we used displayed six favorite numbers (you set these yourself). Other features include recent call history and automatic answering.
Calls came through clearly and no one complained that they couldn't hear us well (with the SLVR, but with a Nokia 5300, we got some distracting static, so this could vary from phone to phone). Also, the unit automatically connected for hands-free calling every time we entered the vehicle. To enable the voice recognition for hands-free dialing, we had to physically push a (soft) button on the head unit before saying the contact name. Now, if you have to push a button to enable voice recognition, that really isn't "hands-free" dialing.
We tested the other main feature, Bluetooth audio streaming, with a Nokia 5300. A simple interface on the AVIC-D3's screen lets you play, pause and skip tracks (it doesn't display audio information, though). The sound is more reliable than your standard FM mod, but still inferior to running a wire and much worse than a CD. But then, the goal here is convenience, not sound quality. Convenient it certainly is, but it would be more so if the unit synced automatically to your phone for audio streaming, instead of only automatically connecting for hands-free use only. Little gripes aside, the CD-BTB200 does its job and does it well. -Brook Howell