Parrot Hands-free Speakerphone

I've spent a long time looking for a good car speakerphone system. Bluetooth headsets look way too geeky for my taste and some of the in-car 'sound enhancing' products make my car look like a police vehicle with all that cable clutter.

I would use the Loudspeaker function of the phone itself, but it gets a bit too clumsy when I'm driving and that can really attract the cops. The Parrot (as 'different' as the brand name sounds), has come up with a good concept. You take the same Bluetooth pairing speaker function from any standard Bluetooth headset, and make it a loudspeaker. All I can say is — Why the hell did it take so long to hit the market?!?

Looks-wise the Parrot Speakerphone looks very basic with a speaker, volume control and the two buttons for accepting and rejecting calls. Its very visually appealing unless you have a thing for big bug-shaped objects, so sticking it to the sun guard of my car was a bit of an eye sore. Making it look good should ideally be the next step in this product's evolution cycle. But then again, its all about the performance with this one, isn't it?

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The Parrot effortlessly paired with my mobile phone with simple instructions in the manual. Once paired, you can place the unit just about anywhere within 25 feet in the vicinity without distortion, which is excellent by any standards. Even at 30 feet I got a bit of distortion but it was only after 35 feet where it was undetectable.

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The volume knob is multi-functional. Besides controlling the loudness of the device, it also allows you to change the user language, volume level of the interface and other options. You can pair up to five mobile devices to the device (one at a time, of course). A sixth device with invoke a "Memory full" error. But that's all good, as you can clear the memory of the device at any time, and start over.Parrot comes with an in-built battery that can be charged via any regular USB cable, or the bundled car charger or AC adapter. The battery life is pretty good with around 10 hours of talk time and 250 hours of standby after a full charge. This really helps considering that once you start using it in your car, you'd just like to leave it there and forget about plugging it in every now and then for charging.

Overall, the performance quality of the Parrot handsfree kit was top-notch. I had conversations with the windows open and unless there's some serious honking going on around you, you can easily have a great conversation without any disturbance. Of course maximum clarity is achieved with the windows pulled up, but that wouldn't be much of a fun test now.

Rs. 6,500 for the Parrot Speakerphone is very steep by any standards considering that most bluetooth headsets will cost you an average for Rs. 2,000, this one seems to be demanding a lot. But still, if you really hate those darn headsets and need an in-car device to save you from all those traffic violation challans, then it may just about be worth it for you. Rest assured, it does what it's supposed to and does it pretty well.