iPhone Bluetooth car shootout

iProng goes hands-on with in-car bluetooth solutions for your iPhone from Kensington and Contour Design

Let me begin this review by saying that while my car lacks integrated Bluetooth connectivity, I am ultimately not the ideal buyer for one of these products as my time in the car is usually minimal. I live in a small town, so my daily commute is often under ten minutes. However, I do like the idea of a Bluetooth car kit, but in the testing of these products, I put more miles on my car than I normally would in any given day.

I’ll look at each product separately before comparing them.



Kensington Hands-Free Visor Car Kit


The Kensington bluetooth kit is on the surface a nice product. It clips to your visor and has a built-in microphone and speaker so you can easily hear and be heard. It has three large programmable speed dial buttons, as well as an answer/hang-up button and a slider at the top of the unit to control speaker volume. It also comes with a USB-based car charger and spare battery (but more on that later).

As far as initial set-up goes, pairing your phone to the bluetooth receiver is simple and painless and after the initial pairing, all need to do is make sure bluetooth is enabled on your phone and hit the power button on the unit to pair them. When you leave your car, nothing more is required, as the unit will power off automatically after 15 minutes when a paired device is removed.


Setting up the speed dial buttons is a little more frustrating, as you must actually be engaged in a call with the person to whom you want to the speed dial to, although this is an understandable move to make the unit more user-friendly and accessible, it is still a little frustrating that you must be on the phone with them – and having the phone ringing will not work. I tried setting up a speed dial with a friend who was not answering his phone at the time, and had to wait for the voicemail to connect before the speed dial would be set. By then, he had a useless voicemail in his inbox. After that, however, the speed dial is a wonderful addition. It allows you to make a call without actually reaching to your phone, which keeps your eyes on the road.

Regarding call quality, I tested both units with windows up and down at various speeds (up to about 65mph give or take) and I was informed by my test subjects that the Kensington unit sounded quite good. Even at 65 mph with the windows cracked, they reported that there was only slight background noise. One drawback, though, is that the speaker on the Kensington unit is not loud enough. While people reported they could hear me clearly at top speed with the windows down, I struggled to hear them, even with the unit turned up to maximum volume. The same was true with the windows up. In slower situations, though, the volume was perfectly acceptable, so if you commute to work and are in primarily stop-and-go traffic, you should be able to hear your calls fine.


A nice inclusion on Kensington’s part, is a spare battery along with its car charger. This means that if you battery dies, you can easily pop in the spare, that has been charging all along, and continue about your business. The only possible drawback is if your battery dies mid-call, as there is no way to charge the battery directly from the charger– it must be removed and put into the charger. However, in my testing, I never actually ran out of power, and Kensington does claim a 10 hour life for calls for each battery, which is more than acceptable for all but power users.

Contour Design
SurfaceSoundCompact

The Contour SurfaceSoundCompact, like the Kensington car kit, is quite easy to pair initially with the iPhone. To power on the unit, one must swing down a small rotary arm with a microphone on it, which prompts a connecting noise and a voice confirmation when the devices are paired. This is nice, as it allows you to position the microphone at various angles to help with audio clarity during calls. However, there is also a drawback with having the arm as the on/off switch– if you forget to put the arm back to its closed position when you leave the car, the device will stay on; there is no auto shutoff feature. Contour does claim the device has 21 days worth of standby time, and admittedly, accidentally leaving the device on never drained its battery, even when I did so overnight, but it is a potential issue if you’re on the phone and in a hurry and forget to turn it off.

Again, when when driving, ease-of-use is a factor on a product such as this, and the Contour does fairly well at it, except that the buttons for answering a call and adjusting the volume are on the side of the unit (the side covered by the rotating arm when closed) which can make using the device difficult at first. One has to remember where the volume up/down button is (on the “top”) versus the call answer/end button (on the “bottom”) when taking calls or adjusting volume in-call. Granted, the buttons are large enough to feel and there is a tactile difference between them, but there is a slight learning curve that could be slightly distracting while driving. After a few times, though, I found them easy enough to remember and use, but potential buyers should be warned about the slight learning curve.

As far as call quality goes, in my testing everyone reported that my voice came through clearly even at high speeds with the windows cracked. Perhaps it is also the larger speaker, but I found that call volume was better in the Contour SurfaceSound than in the Kensington unit. At 65 mph with the windows cracked, I could hear things on my end much easier, though there was a little straining. At the same speed with the windows up, the speaker more than compensated for road noise.

Contour claims a battery life of 15 hours of talk time, and though I did not time the conversations, nor did I talk for 15 hours in a row with the unit, I did find that the overall battery life was quite good. In two weeks worth of testing, the battery was only beginning to die, though it should be noted that my testing was more on the “moderate use” side than “heavy use.”

A final note on the Contour unit: there is a small metal bump on one side of the unit (the side that presses against the visor) which I can only assume is meant to help hold the unit in place and prevent it from slipping. However, this also means that to remove it, you must be sure to lift up the entire unit rather than just sliding it off the visor. If you don’t lift it up, the bump, which is slightly pointed, will drag across the visor, potentially causing damage to it. I understand the rationale behind this, since the all-metal body is heavier than Kensington’s plastic body; however, there should be some sort of warning about this in the manual, as I caused several slight tears in my car’s visor the first time I tried to remove /reposition the unit.

Side-by-side comparison

Overall, both units have advantageous features and either one would be perfectly usable by anyone, but there are some advantages and disadvantages to both. For one, Kensington’s inclusion of a second battery is quite nice, as the only way to charge the Contour SurfaceSound is via a cable. Granted they include a USB car charger which allows one to charge either in the car or from a computer (or other USB charger, though they do say using the device with another USB charger will void the warranty). However, if your unit dies mid-trip, the only options are to dangle a cord from your visor to the cigarette lighter or remove the unit from the visor to charge. Both are less than ideal, as the first option puts a cord in your field of vision (rather distracting), while the other forces you to remove it from an ideal location, making taking calls more difficult and possibly impacting audio quality on the other person’s end.

The other slight downside to the Contour product is that since it lacks any speed dial functionality, other than answering and ending calls, all other actions must be made from your phone. If you wish to call someone, you must pull out your phone, find the contact, etc which, as many states with laws about non-handsfree phone use will agree, can be distracting while driving. There are useful shortcuts on the unit for redialing the last call made or received, but if you wish to call someone new, you’re going to have to resort to the phone itself.

In terms of comparing call quality, the overall winner is the Contour. Everyone I called using it said that it was easier to hear me and the overall quality was better.

The bottom line on these units is that the speed dial and extra battery are very nice for the Kensington, but the Contour unit overall has better call quality and a louder speaker for those who have trouble hearing or will be using the unit on a car trip (such as myself).