Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Bluetooth hands free car kit KT100 Plantronics from Officeworks pleasantly surprises.

OK. I have to admit I love gadgets but I've been burnt a few times with bargains that frankly didn't live up to my expectation. In other words, I'd consider them rubbish. So you'll forgive me when I decided to buy a $49 bluetooth hands free car kit unit from Officeworks and didn't have high hopes. "Can I bring it back if it doesn't work to my expectation" I asked. "Yes, no problem".

But then my first surprise the K100 unit was a Plantronics device and I've had a good run from Plantronics devices. I was immediately happier.

Now I accept this unit clips over the visor and needs to be recharged. My iPhone 4 is currently on a stalk stuck to the front window and sort of works, but I have to lean forward and never knowing if I'm yelling too loudly or not. So having a device on the visor appeals to me and charging whilst a nuisance, is OK for the price.

After charging I paired the device and had it going almost immediately. That was easy enough I thought, but do keep in mind I support computers, so technology isn't a concern for me. But even then I was happy with the simplicity.

Reading the sheet of paper that came with the device I was able to do what I wanted. However what surprised me was the voice calling worked better than I expected and I'd not previously used that feature much on the mobile, but now I'm very happy to.

I decided to have a conversation and transmit the sound through the radio speakers. I didn't buy the unit for that function but thought, hey, it's there, let's see how it goes. At first I was very happy but then during the call the quality deteriorated at times to the point where I was not happy at all. That's OK, back to using the speaker in the unit. It sounds a little tin like at times, but overall it is quite acceptable.

So now I'm a very happy little vegemite as I'm able to make hands free calls and receive the occasional call whilst on the road. I can use voice calling very easily and I no longer have to lean over and shout at the iPhone and struggle to listen to the conversation.

Very happy indeed.

Quite surprisingly the $49 price in Officeworks is actually one of the best I can find. Given that I can go into a store and pick it up, so there's no shipping fee, it's actually the cheapest I can find.

Most reviews I read of the unit did nothing more than look at the container and examine it. To me those reviews are close to useless. I wanted to hear the thoughts of someone who used the device.

If I did have any gripes it would be the FM quality through the car speakers, (which by the way was easy to set up), and perhaps the need to charge, but hey, at the price I'm not going to complain. The only time I was really tricked and didn't know what to do was when I was on one call and a second call was coming through. I hung up on the first and for a moment didn't know how to get the second caller onto the hands free, but quickly found out I could. I don't expect that to be a problem.

One other point, I did try to connect the unit to a low cost Android 2.3 mobile phone and was not able to. The iPhone 4 gave me no problems, so you may need to check to see if the device is compatible with your mobile phone.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.
Happy to answer on my new hands free device.


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