Hands-free calling Video

Hands-free calling Video Transcript

[ Music ] ^M00:00:04

>> Whether or not the law in your area says you gotta go handsfree in the car. You know you should. In this insider secret, I'm gonna show a handful of ways to do it and the pros of cons of each. Now hang up and pay attention [music]. No issue I can imagine the best way to do a handsfree in your car is to let the factory figure it out for you, like in this BMW 750i, built in handsfree via Bluetooth wireless technology that means my phone without any wires integrates into the car into the audio system that controls on the display and turns this into a great big rolling high-fidelity speaker phone. The downside of course is simple. It's expensive. If you don't already have a car that has this built in, you have to buy a car that does. Now the most common way to do handsfree without buying a new car is one of these guys, a Bluetooth headset. Again, using the same Bluetooth technology you might find in the car, but all built-in to this headset. Now the upsides of these are extreme simplicity. You've got no wires, no cables, nothing coming off of this, so it's all cordless to your phone and of course it can also be used to take and drop calls. There's usually a button on here as well as one for volume. They cost about 60 to a 100 bucks for a good one. The downsides are many models have frequent complaints of really horrendous audio quality so you've got to get a good one like one that's seen as reviewed and given a thumbs-up for good sound and they do require charging. They have their own power source. Another option I would classify as the non-headset bluetooth adaptors. These are gadgets like this Motorola ROKR T505. It's a clip-on product as you can see. It uses Bluetooth to connect to my phone, has its own speaker built in but again we're not using a headset here and it also in this model has an FM transmitter to make my car stereo the speaker phone. So when I go to make a phone call, it's going to be very simply automatically routed to the car stereo like so.

>> Hi, you've reached Brian Cooley of CNET.com. I can't take your call right now, so the message is...

>> Pretty good. This costs about $100, this category of device. They're portable. They go from car to car and again they're fairly affordable plus they can take advantage in some cases of your car stereo as the audio device. On the other hand, they are one more gadget to carry around. They are fairly bulky thing compared to a headset and they do have their own need for power or a charge. So if you like the idea of that separate Bluetooth you're after but you want more integration in a little more part of a car, you can go to something like disc unit from Parrot. Here's the controller that has a colored LCD, a couple of buttons and a knob and you'd mount this somewhere. It integrates into your actual OEM audio system so that the CPU unit here can handle things like muting and putting the audio over the car stereo when you get a call. You got a microphone that would mount either up here on the headliner, sometimes over on the pillaret. May be a 100 dollars or 200 dollars for the unit and another hundred or two to actually get them installed, the labor cost that could be a nice little ground and of course once this mascot gets installed in your car, it's not going from vehicle to vehicle so it's a one-car solution that could be a downside. I realized all these high-tech solutions might just be a little ambitious for you. So, here's some low-tech advice. Believe it or not, a headset like this, you've probably used something like this for your phone at home. If you have a cordless phone, let's say, but this can be great on your car with a cellphone too with the right connector and you've got a boom microphone here which gets right near your voice plus you gotta head phone style speaker clamped over your ear so that's why you get better quality as also way you get all this bulk. These guys cost you know 30 bucks for a good set. The last solution is the cheapest, the speaker phone in your cellphone. Most cellphones today have this feature. Just press the button line and that one right there then the speaker mode.

>> That you know this approach that realized it's gonna be sketchy to hear as to give your phone at your advantage. Just listen to me, instill location with the microphone pointed toward your voice with the windows up, turn the radio off and switch to the disc called WAV those portions ought to be on the range to listen to you via this cheap gate solution.

>> You know the cheaper of these solutions you choose remember a lot of research points to the fact that handsfree is of the biggest battle. It's mind free. You gotta keep your mind on the road not just your hands on the wheel. Good rule of thumb is when you're talking on the phone in the car, people on the other hand should say, "are you paying attention to me?" because that should be second priority. ^M00:04:33 [ Music ]