Being safe while driving is pretty darn important. Distracted drivers are such an issue that the NTSB wants all cell phone use to be banned while driving, and even y'all, our faithful readers, admit to texting while driving. While a Bluetooth speakerphone certainly doesn't mitigate all of these issues, it can certainly help to alleviate some of them. Today, we're taking a look at the Blueant Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Speakerphone.
Small and discreet, the Blueant Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Speakerphone aims to bring a big sound in a small package, all while offering a stated 15 hours of talk time and 800 hours of standby time. Blueant uses some "Digital Signal Processing" to give incredibly clear call quality and microphone, but in my experience, the quality isn't anything to phone home about. It's not bad, but it's not mind-blowing.
The microphone has a little niggle in that it cuts off the very beginning and end of your phrases. This makes total sense to me (since those are typically the softest parts), but even with the windows rolled up and the stereo off, the issue persisted. The promise of eliminating noise, even while the car is traveling, has loud engine noise, or while the windows are down seems unfulfilled.
Touching the green button while you're all paired up gives you the option to choose your favorite voice dialer on your phone, and surprisingly enough, the stock voice dialer worked better than both Vlingo and Vlingo InCar. This is mostly because voice dialer goes straight to listening for your command, whereas Vlingo and its InCar variant both open the full app, then want you to touch a button onscreen, before they'll listen for a command. With the stock voice dialer, I had no misdials, so I can say the microphone picked up names quite well.
The Supertooth 3 attaches to your visor using a metal clip and magnets attached to the actual speakerphone. I'll admit, this is pretty brilliant. The metal clip is small and unobtrusive, giving you enough flexibility with placement. The magnets on the back of the speakerphone are strong (it won't come unlatched, even if you're driving over bumps), and when you've parked, you can easily remove it from the clip to hide (if that's your thing).
Overall, the Blueant Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Speakerphone is good. It's not bad, but it isn't great, either. If you're looking for a solid Bluetooth microphone, this one won't steer you wrong, but for the price, there's probably some higher quality devices you could pick up.
We've got a picture gallery after the break.
