Motorola Roadster review

[rolandct]

I had a serious problem: one of my cars is without Bluetooth, sad I know. Now I don't like ear pieces because I loathe having to charge them and keep track of them since I don't use them outside the car. I didn't feel like spending the money on a fully integrated BT kit. Alas a clip-on solution would be my salvation via the Moto Roadster. As a bonus I could play music through it as well.
Here's the quick run down:
Hardware: The unit is rock solid, from the buttons to the visor clip. It feels like it'll last for many years. Buttons are: mute, volume up, volume down, voice command, FM transmittor on/off, send/end combo button, play/pause combo button.
Phone: You can answer reject calls by voice. It syncs your contacts so it'll read names when it can find them and numbers when it can't. Very easy to hit the send/end button, so hanging up calls is a breeze. I'll address quality below.
Sound (unit itself): The built in speaker is loud and clear and the noise cancellation works well. When I ask people how my phone sounds most say it's like I am holding it. When playing through radio the sound gets "flattened out" a little but that's the deal with FM transmitters.
MotoSpeak: This works for Android and BB phones with the app installed, which can be turned on and off. It reads you your texts messages and allows you to respond. It asks you whether to read it to you after stating the caller ID or name from your phone book, then after reading you the message it asks if you want to reply, then reads back you reply to confirm it got it right. I found it to be quite accurate for the relatively short messages I typically text.
Battery: I've only had it for about 2 weeks so it is tough to tell which is a good sign. The stated talk time is 2 days and 2 weeks of standby time. I found with light calling and regular use of BT audio to listen to my music I was able to get about 10 days before having to plug it into the car charger for a day.
BT Music: Music via BT works great. Sound quality is what you would expect from a transmitter, not bad but not like being hard wired. It is nice just to hit the play button and start a shuffle of what's on your phone when you're feeling lazy.
Voice commands

Here's the gotchas and bonuses:
+The device never needs to be shutoff, seriously. When it loses the connection it goes into power save and when it "hears" the door slam it turns itself on briefly to check for a BT signal. I have never shut it off yet. I will say a coupe times I did have to hit a button as it didn't auto come on automatically, but the important part is you never have to sweat turning it off.
-The dedicated button for voice commands appears to be locked to the Moto commands which I find less accurate than the Google Voice Search.
-/+There is one difference between using the built-in speakers vs the car speakers via FM in terms of call quality. When I used the built in speaker sometimes it's to aggressive to switching from listening to playing and the end of my word gets cutoff to the person on the other end. Not enough for the person not to understand me, but just enough to notice. I assume this is a duplex issue. However when you use the FM transmitter that problem goes away and there is no clipping. The trade off is you go from perfect noise cancellation while using the built in mic/speaker to very good noise cancellation with just using the mic and car speakers. However this is more on the nick-picky side than an actual problem.
+You can have 2 phones connected to it simultaneously and works as expected. It states it even allows you to swap calls from different phones but I haven't tried that yet.
-Can't seem to change MotoSpeak to use another text messaging app, like GVoice for reading messages.
+It will use your default text messaging app for creating from the voice command button which gives you some flexibility.

So if you're like me and fall into that gap between ear pieces and integrated kit, I would recommend this product. If you have any questions just post them.

Here's the product link:
http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US...oadster-US-EN1

[Droid-X-Forums]

[sandman1887]

Does anyone know if you can play Pandora or Slacker radio over the Roadster using a Droid X? (if it makes a difference, the phone will be in the car mounting kit during playback)

[jtb226]

I had the Roadster for a few days, but then returned it. I thought the in-call volume was great, but the voice commands and reading of text messages and such could almost not be heard when I was driving on the highway. Maybe it was something I was doing wrong (and please correct me if it was). Other than that, the unit was great. But I didn't want to invest the money in it if it wasn't going to adequately do one of the main jobs I bought it for (Motospeak). Also, it was really annoying trying to strain to hear the voice commands read back to me.

[dahoskins]

I had a similar problem with the roadster using only moto voice commands until I used the car dock applications on the Droid x. This solved
the problem and now voice commands like "directions to ' some address' " work fine.

[OtivehtX]

Thanks for this post as i do fall in to that catagory of not liking In Ear setups. I think i will be giving this device a shot.

Thanks,

[anava73]

Yes you can play Pandora and Slacker.

[mugz91]

Very nicely written review, should have seen it before now.

Sent from my DROIDX using Droid X Forums

[chuck54]

I love this device, even connects with my dads phone! I'm not sure what it is, but is there a way for him to play his music through this too? It makes the audible tones when connected, but when the phone plays music, it plays it through his phones "oh so crappy "speaker ....

Sent from my DROIDX using Droid X Forums

[sharonede]

I was wondering......does anyone have the instructions to setup and playback music that is on my phone through the Roadster, through the car speakers?
I have a MyTouch 3G