Solar-powered Bluetooth Car Kit from Nexxus / IOGEAR
Hands-free car kits for vehicles – tried many, liked few. I’ve tried dedicated car kits, phones built into the dashboard, Bluetooth earpieces, wired headphones and hands-free Bluetooth kits, to name just a few. I’ve never found a solution that really answered all my needs. That is, until I found this Nexxus Drivemulti Solar.
Why It’s Clever
The dedicated car kits, adapted to my phone, had the advantage that my phone always had a full charge and I could use my phone’s contact list. The drawback is that whenever I got a new phone – or a new car – it became obsolete.
The phone built into my dashboard had great sound quality and was neatly integrated with the radio – but it needed a second subscriber card, and I had to switch off my cell phone so that calls could get through on the car phone. Subsequently, half of the time I forgot to switch my phone on again when stepping out of my car. An additional problem was that my wife and I tend to swap cars, depending on the needs of the day.
The wired headphones were a real pain. Most of the time the phone stopped ringing before I managed to untangle the wires. The untangling being anything but a hands-free process, by the way.
The Bluetooth earpiece’s battery, in turn, managed to die on me in the middle of important calls. Yet another device I needed to remember to charge in good time (although this Bluetooth earpiece also solves that problem).
The hands-free Bluetooth car kit was nice but permanently occupied my cigarette lighter socket. It left me with no opportunity anymore to charge my cell phone in the car.
This tiny Nexxus Drivemulti Solar (you'll see the same model under the IOGEAR brand name), however, deals with most of the shortcomings of the other solutions.
First of all, the holder has two suction cups, allowing you to fix it to your windshield in less than a second – no screws, no wires.
Secondly, you don’t need to charge it anymore. It’s equipped with a solar panel that charges it continuously, as long as there is daylight. And it doesn’t really need to be a sunny day for it to work.
It pairs with multiple cell phones and can connect with two at the same time (pairing it with the phone is a breeze, by the way). Now I have two of these nifty gadgets: one for my car and one for my wife’s. When we swap cars, we don’t need to do a thing anymore, because our phones automatically connect with the Nexxus in whichever car is in use. And when we’re together in the same car, the same hands-free kit works for both phones in parallel.
Although the device is very small and light, the sound quality is surprisingly good. The microphone is a little less sensitive, so you need to speak up a bit to be heard clearly on the remote end, but it’s not really too much trouble.
More info in this video (this is the model with caller announce):
Summary
- Bluetooth car kit for cell phones
- Pairs with multiple phones
- Can connect with two phones simultaneously
- No wires, no installation
- Solar powered
- Auto switch-off when phone is out of reach
- Compliant with Bluetooth 2.1.
Tips
There are several similar devices on the market. We decided to try out this one, because it has the best reviews on several e-commerce sites.
Be aware that there is a multipoint model, connecting with more than one phone at the same time, and a TTS model with caller announce, but which isn't multipoint !
If you need a solar-powered solution that can also be used outside your car, you might consider this solar-powered Bluetooth earpiece.
Where to buy
You can buy the solar-powered Bluetooth car kit from Amazon.com, where it sells under the IOGEAR brand or from Amazon.co.uk.
You can read some good user reviews there too.
Approx. price: $30
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Categories: time saving,safety,portable devices,car & garage,multimedia
