Motorola Roadster Bluetooth In-Car Speakerphone Review

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(More customer reviews)Was excited to learn about this new product from Motorola - I previously had the Motorola T505 and liked it (but it broke), so decided to try the Roadster thinking it was the top of the line. I was quite disappointed however.
Without writing a whole chapter on here, I tried 2 different Roadsters. The first time I got it, I noticed one strange thing about the unit. According to the features and the instruction manual, the device is supposed to auto power off and on depending on if it senses your connection. I tried this, but it did not work. It would auto power off if I left the car, but when I returned, the device would remain off. Further more, the device would not power on EVEN if i manually turned it back on. It would basically just be "dead" - no response whatsoever regardless of what I did, even if I turned off my phone's bluetooth and back on, or unpaired and repaired. It seemed as long as the Roadster was listed as a pairing device in the phone, it would not work - the only way to wake it back up was to tell my phone to "forget this device" (i have an iphone), and to completely begin the pairing all over. It's not a big issue per say, since I could easily get around it by just turning it on and off manually. I just thought if this was an advertised feature, then it should work that way. Plus, for the times I forgot to manually turn the device off before leaving the car, everytime I came back I'd have to go through the tedious process of resetting the device (different from unpairing reguarly).
I thought this might've been a defect with this unit, so I went back to Bestbuy and exchanged it for another unit. This one, even worse - I didn't get the chance to try to the auto on/off because I immediately noticed another issue. With this unit I just exchanged it for, FM transmitter mode would NOT work if the battery cable was plugged in. If I unplugged the battery cable, then FM mode would work fine. I tried resetting the device to factory settings but to no avail. Since bluetooth was successfully synced, this tells me it's not a compatibility issue but a defect in the device.
It's a pity because I really think the Roadster is a great product, just marred from design or build defects.
Needless to say, I ultimately returned it for a full refund.
On the side though, when the device worked, I noticed these pros and cons:
Pros:
- Speaker volume is sufficiently loud and clear even when driving on the highway or on rough pavement. However, there's a slight "boom" if the volume is set at the highest point
- Pairing is really fast, and the voice guidance is helpful. The female voice is also not as robotic sounding as my previous T505
- Very easy to scan FM channels - allows not only auto scanning but manual selection as well (via +/- keys), which makes it easier to get a channel.
- Illuminated keys - very helpful at night
- displays battery level on your iphone
- while on the phone, people on the other end have reported pretty clear quality, albeit sounding a bit "distant"
Cons:
- Quality and potential defects I mentioned above
- I found the FM transmission quality in my old T505 to be clearer than the Roadster. The Roadster's transmission always seemed to have a little static (same channels I used as my T505 on same roads), and sometimes faded in the background or did not sound as crisp
- Status lights (i.e. paired, unpaired, audio streaming, etc.) are very tiny LEDs on the side of the unit - impossible to see while driving

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Stay in touch on the road with Roadster Bluetooth speakerphone from Motorola's Elite Series which offers dual-microphone noise cancellation technology to ensure you can be heard over road noise and block out background noise better than any other speakerphone currently on the market. Equipped with MotoSpeak, the Roadster reads aloud text messages and allows you to dictate your text response, so you can stay in touch while on the road.


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