Bluetooth for non-Bluetooth Prius

[tomdeimos]

Been looking for Bluetooth for my cell phone which doesn't have it, and for my Prius which also doesn't. It is very frustrating.
Bought a bunch and nothing works adequately:

For the phone I added a Cardo unit from Radioshack, and this seems to be great.
I like everything except needing to find a needle to pair the unit.

For the other half, I am not happy at all:

1 Tried a Motorola headset, H700. Found I couldn't hear due to low volume.
2 Tried a Jabra JX10 and found volume marginally better but still no good in a moving car.

So I looked for something to interface to the radio. Found Alpine has something for their units, and Parrot seems big, but found nothing for Prius.

So my third attempt I went with a self-contained speakerphone.

Got a Jabra unit and found again I could not hear it at all. Not even enough volume to use it in the house let alone the car.
With AC going I could not even tell there was a voice coming from the speaker.

For now I am using a Supertooth II unit. This works great, has enough volume, and is quite usable most of the time.
It is only Bluetooth 1.1 which may be why it sometimes gets noisy interference.
Other than that it works.

I can't find a unit with bluetooth 2.0 or 1.2 that works, so far.

Update:

I have a correction to make regarding the Jabra speakerphone. It works a lot better than I thought. There is a conference mode for indoor use that cuts the gain way down, and some how I got it into that mode and it stayed there. No idea how.

So once I got into the car mode I found it worked. It had less echo and less noise from interference than the Supertooth II, but otherwise Supertooth II was better. Both fullly usable.

I also discovered the Cardo adapter has to be set just right: low gain for the Jabra but high gain was better with the Supertooth II. This probably depends on the phone too, mine is audiovox.

[berylrb]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tomdeimos @ Jul 18 2006, 09:16 AM) [snapback]288111[/snapback]</div>

1 Tried a Motorola headset, H700. Found I couldn't hear due to low volume.
2 Tried a Jabra JX10 and found volume marginally better but still no good in a moving car.
...
I can't find a unit with bluetooth 2.0 or 1.2 that works, so far.
[/b]

I'm using a Plantronics 320 and did a 30 day trial of the PLantronics 640 both are excellent in the car, however, my phone does have bluetooth built-in, w600i.

The Plantronics 640 is of the micro-weight type, needs no ear clip has a gel type ear bud that is extremely comfortable, incredibly snug and lightweight, hence, the sound quality is comparable to a MP3 player with an ear bud, I found I had to turn the volume down in both the 320 and 640.

I returned the 640 because for the money ($150) I wanted to wait for the 645 to come out (it's in Europe only now), the 320 was only $40 2/ rebate.

[tomdeimos]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(berylrb @ Jul 18 2006, 11:04 AM) [snapback]288137[/snapback]</div>

I'm using a Plantronics 320 and did a 30 day trial of the PLantronics 640 both are excellent in the car, however, my phone does have bluetooth built-in, w600i.

The Plantronics 640 is of the micro-weight type, needs no ear clip has a gel type ear bud that is extremely comfortable, incredibly snug and lightweight, hence, the sound quality is comparable to a MP3 player with an ear bud, I found I had to turn the volume down in both the 320 and 640.

I returned the 640 because for the money ($150) I wanted to wait for the 645 to come out (it's in Europe only now), the 320 was only $40 2/ rebate.
[/b]

OK I finally got my speakerphones working usably. See my update in the original post.

I may yet try to get a better headset so thanks for the tip on Plantronics. I will try them next. Maybe wait till I can get the 645.