Working on the road can easily take its toll on people, especially when you’re bogged down by incomprehensible conversations through your Bluetooth headset, but with the company of the Motorola Roadster, it can seemingly mend things in the car. The Motorola Roadster Bluetooth car kit has great advertised features such as MotoSpeak, streaming music through the FM stereo and answering or rejecting calls with voice commands.
While those features are fantastic, their functionality depends 100 percent upon the functionality of your mobile phone. The number one advertised feature, MotoSpeak, is actually an application specifically designed only for BlackBerry 4.5+ devices and Android 2.1 or above.
The Motorola Roadster combines Bluetooth connectivity and FM transmission to create a device that’s useful for much more than phone calls.
The black Bluetooth car kit is simplistic in design but has cleverly positioned call and music buttons for easy in car access. The status indicator lights, however, are inconveniently positioned on the side of the device and are nearly impossible to see without taking the device off the visor or craning your neck to the right.
Controls are broken into two groups, separated by the Roadster’s approximately 2 inch loudspeaker, which is covered by a fabric panel. Audio output from this speaker is loud and clear, almost too loud for indoor environments.
You won’t want to go playing with this speakerphone at your desk, but in a moving vehicle with road, engine, and wind noise, it’s just loud enough. Also hidden somewhere beneath the fabric panel are the Roadster dual noise canceling microphones.
How to use it? Plug it in, flip the Power switch, and you hear, “Ready to pair. Go to Bluetooth menu on phone to complete pairing. Enter 0000 if required.” Imagine that – Instructions spoken to you through the built in speaker. Now, that’s innovation.
After that you are ready to slide it onto your car’s visor. With small Bluetooth earpieces, it’s a constant battle to make and receive phone calls. You have to find the earpiece, slide it on your ear, make sure it’s turned on, and pray that you remembered to actually charge it.
Motorola Roadster features:
- MotoSpeak : “Now texting is as easy as talking.” This application creates a true hands-free driving experience for users. MotoSpeak allows you to receive texts, have them read aloud to you and reply to that text all by using voice commands. This application is only in English.
- FM transmitter : From your phone’s music library, or Pandora station, you can stream music through the FM speakers via the Bluetooth car kit. The Motorola Roadster has dedicated music buttons located at the bottom of the device for easy music control. If you hear a song that does not sound familiar, use the voice command feature to access the song’s song title and artist name.
- Bing 411 : Access driving conditions to make the commute easier. Weather conditions, movie times and restaurant reservations can be accessed and made directly with your Bluetooth kit.
The Roadster also feature A2DP audio streaming, which is great for using the hands free device for listening to music or podcasts (the enjoyment of which is enhanced further when you use the device as a Bluetooth to FM bridge to send the audio to your car’s speaker). However, the main reason Motorola included this function is for use with its MotoSpeak app for Android and BlackBerry devices.
MotoSpeak is a text to speech hands free texting app that reads incoming SMS messages aloud and allows you to set an auto response that lets your friends know that you’re driving. Android 2.2 users can even speak responses that are translated into text messages.
For more than 2 weeks of normal usage, we’re content finding the Motorola Roadster still kicking along in the battery department at medium capacity. The manufacturer has it rated for 20 hours of talk and 3 weeks of standby time. Not only does the car charger allow you to keep the device tucked away in your car, but its battery savings mode kicks in after some period of inactivity.
Just when we were digging everything we’ve seen with the Motorola Roadster, its less than enticing calling quality with our callers actually made the experience with it very painful. More than that, it doesn’t quite embody some of the additional features gracing other models – like built in voice control.
Then, even though we enjoyed its tertiary feature of being an FM transmitter, it doesn’t necessarily make itself the most presentable hands free tool out there in the market. At $99.99, it borders at the upper end of the spectrum, which should seriously make you think before considering its purchase.
