Bluetooth car, phone - now you need a Bluetooth Headset!

Thanks for the heads up on this one!

Thanks Danny, I have been trying to find the Plantronics headset for less than $100., CompUSA had a sale in early Dec. but no inventory at store and no raincheck. This one looks similar if not smaller (good thing). According to the ecost website there were only 4 left in inventory. Mine will be here by Wed.

Thanks again,
Nascar Joe

 

I bought the Sony Ericsson HBH-65. Another popular one is the Jabra BT-200.

The phone geeks rate those two as amongst the two top ones in the market. And these guys are hardcore. Many of them have bought 3 or 4 different ones, to go with their bazillion phones.

 

Jabra Adaptor (any adaptor!?) for non bluetooth phones?

Jabra makes and adaptor with their BT-200 to plug into non bluetooth fone (like my Nextel i730). In theory this adaptor should work with cars but according to Jabra they haven't had much luck with the Prius or other cars.

Has anyone gotten this or any adaptor to work with the Prius?

jv <- waiting for black #9

 

I tried the Jabra with adaptor on a Kyocera 7135 Smart phone. No luck getting it to work in the Prius although the headset and phone worked fine. It takes more than simple Bluetooth to work - the phone needs BT and several features to allow it to recognize the Prius and vice-versa.

 

Jabra BT200

I have the BT200 for use with my Nokia 3650, and it works very well. It came free with the phone from Amazon, so I was skeptical and almost just sold it on eBay before trying it, but I'm glad I decided to try it and keep it.

I'm curious why people want to get a headset from their hands-free Prius?

The only thing I can think of is for privacy from passengers.

 

No, no, you are missing the point. It isn't that people want to use headsets with the Prius it is that many people do not have bluetooth fones and would like a solution to work with the Prius. One version of the BT200 headset includes an *adaptor* to work with non bluetooth phones, essentially making it a bluetooth phone to work with the headset. Our (my) hope was that this *adaptor* would work with the Prius.

Alas, it appears not to be the case.

jv

 

FYI, ecost.com is getting 400 Bluetrek headsets in on 3/15. They're still taking orders on their website...

 

Finally got the Blue-Trek handsfree unit for my T616, so I thought I'd share some feedback on it.

The unit itself quite lightweight and fits securely over and behind your ear, like a hearing aid. It comes with an AC charger and you really do need to charge it every night since Bluetooth sucks so much power. It's designed to work on either ear.

There are only two buttons on the unit itself. One for power/volume up and the other for volume down. There's also a small red/green flashing LED to indicate present state of charge.

Sound quality is quite good and quite loud enough. The T616 recognized it immediately and connected with no problems. Since the T616 supports voice dialing, you can actually place a call from the earpiece by pressing either of the buttons and speaking the contact name after the beep.

Bluetooth range is 10 meters (~33 feet) so you can pretty much leave the phone plugged into a charger and roam around with just the earpiece.

www.ecost.com is still offering these for $35 plus S&H, which came to $42.16 to San Francisco from the East Coast. This is less than half of the going rate at Amazon or any other online merchant.

I turn off the headset before getting into the car so that the Prius handsfree will automatically connect. If you have the headset connected, the Prius connection will fail. You can, however, use the phone keys to switch back and forth as needed. Both the Prius and the headset will continuously scan for a connection.