Free Speak: First Gen and It Shows
Written: Dec 31 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cool looking
Cons: Bad audio, pairing problems, large transceiver
The Bottom Line: I wish I could recommend this unit based on its coolness factor, but I cannot because of all the technical issues.
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| mookiekong's Full Review: Freespeak Wireless Headset And Multi-Adapter For N... |
I have had this fascination with bluetooth headsets for a while now. My friend John got a Nokia 3650 and a Nokia bluetooth headset and he raves about it all the time. I just had to try one out. Wired hands free headsets are nice and cheap, but they don't have the ultimate coolness of having just this Star Trek-like think hanging from your ear and your phone in your back pocket. But, the problem? My phone does not have built-in bluetooth nor does it have a standard connector. What's a guy to do?
The Connections
Well, I was wandering around Best Buy because I was bored and I spotted a cool PopPort to 2.5mm adapter there for my Nokia 6610! That was the first piece to the puzzle. Now the second part of the puzzle is finding a bluetooth hands free headset that would adapt to a 2.5mm connection. For that I found the Jabra Free Speak for Non-Bluetooth Phones. The connections were all there and I was ready to get cool and start talking wirelessly. Well, almost.
The Setup
The Jabra Free Speak for Non-Bluetooth Phones comes in two parts. There is the earpiece that has three buttons and a battery, it goes around my ears. The second piece is the transceiver/charger that goes on my belt and connects via a cord to my phone on its 2.5mm port. The trans/charger is built nicely with usability in mind since the earpiece slides nicely into it for storage and for charging. Both units have cool blue LEDs that glow and blink depending on the function that they are setup for.
The first thing that any battery operated device needs is to have its battery recharged. So, I plugged in th transceiver/charger and docked the earpiece into it. Two hours later I found the blue lights off and that was the signal that it was time to be cool.
The Equipment
The transceiver/charger has only a port for the power, a blue LED, and a recessed button (more on this later). It has a channel that the earpiece can slide into for storage and charging. The belt-clip is detachable, but I really don't see a reason why it needs to be taken off.
The earpiece has three buttons on it: Talk, Volume Up and Volume Down. The Talk button is a multifunction button depending on how long I depress it. I can turn the unit on and off, turn on bluetooth pairing (more on this later), and it can be used to answer/end calls.
The technical details say that the two units can be as far as 30m from each other and still work. I have tried it for a few feet and it works without losing connection. The 30m is all line-of-sight though, so your mileage may vary if you take your phone and shove it into your backpack or something.
The Job
I slide the earpiece on, which takes a bit to get used to, but once it is on, it is pretty comfortable – and very light. Push and hold down the talk button on the earpiece to turn the thing on, the blue light will blink really quick to let you know that it is on, then it will switch to a slow blink that will let others know that it is on.
Here's where the problems started. I could not hear a thing. I tried turning off then on, but nothing. The problem? A thing in bluetooth called “pairing”. When two devices are to be used together, they need to be paired. Pairing usually means the switching of passwords also, but Jabra got around this with a fixed password on both the earpiece and transceiver. To get the earpiece and transceiver to pair up, I had to dock the earpiece and then push and hold the talk button until the blue light on the earpiece turned solid blue. The I take the stylus (yes, stylus!) and I poke a recessed button on the transceiver and I let the two sit there. There is no way that I could tell that they two were pairing or paired. After a minute or two I just gave up and tried again.
This time the Free Speak worked, I could hear things! Alright, now I am cool and I can talk. There is the second problem. The Free Speak audio quality is not up to par. The audio out of the earpiece is tinny and full of static. When I talk, the receiving end tells me that I sound tinny and funny. Also, I can hear a very slight echo while I am talking. There is an included insert in the box that helps trouble shoot the echo, this requires the stylus again, and all it does is adjust the microphone level of the earpiece. No matter what adjustments I have made, the Free Speak continued to echo. And there are no adjustments for the tinny in and out audio of the headset. Another thing is that when the talk button is pushed to answer an incoming call, there is a long bit of silence as the earpiece and the transceiver/charger try to establish connection. I don't know how that affects the other side of the call, but I do notice that the timer on my phone starts right when I push the talk button and it takes between 2-5 seconds for the connection to establish – the other side is stuck listening to dead silence as the connection is started.
And lastly, I clipped the transceiver/charger on my belt and shoved my phone in my pocket and though at first the transceiver/charger doesn't look too large, it is quite a piece of plastic. It is larger than it looks and the coiled wired makes it look cheezy. With the total addition of the transceiver/charger to my phone, that portion has already doubled in size – my Nokia 6610 is quite a small phone and the transceiver/charger is about the same size as it! So, that does not look too cool.
The Getaway
Well, I returned the Jabra Free Speak for a few reasons. First and foremost, the audio was terrible with the unit. A $10 wired hands free unit does better in audio (that's $10 compared to a $150 for the Free Speak). Other reasons include the large transceiver/charger unit and the painful pairing situation that accompanies the unit.
If you are like me with a non-bluetooth phone, then either upgrade to a bluetooth phone and lose the transceiver or get a wired hands free unit (it's cheaper!). This unit is still a first generation unit and the problems that it has make that point very apparent. I wish I could recommend this unit based on its coolness factor, but I cannot because of all the technical issues.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
mookiekong
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Location: San Jose, CA, USA
Reviews written: 68
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Current Mookie Obsession: Apple iPhone 8GB and Fedora 8.
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