BlueAnt Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Handsfree (Black)

I bought 2 Blue Ant Supertooth 3's for the car visor to comply with Calif law of handsfree cell use...one for me and one for my husband. Neither of us wanted to wear the ear type. We've had them for 2+ weeks. I finally charged the battery in mine. It didnt take long to charge the battery. I turn mine off every time I get out of the car. My husband does not, and his has lasted over a week.
The "paring" was speedy and the Blue Ant accepted my Motorola Razor V9 phone immediately. It has a 'written to voice' feature which means whatever you have in your address book (ie: first names only or first and last) is what you say to the Blue Ant. For example: I touch the green button, it says "say a command". I say "Name dial" and it continues asking me who, and which phone (mobile or home). Very easy. The hassle with getting new technology is having to learn something new. I probably am not acquainted with all features, but so far it works well. When the phone rings, you say "OK", "Answer" or keep silent. It announces who is phoning if they are in your phone's address book.
The magnet clip attaches to the visor and the devise is magnetically attached to the clip. The magnets are strong as I have bumped them hard, and it just twisted, and didnt fall off. It comes with a cigarette lighter cord and an AC for the house with which to charge the battery.
I can recommend this product, however...it is the only one I have ever had, so I dont have anything to compare. I went for the one I thought was best and this is the one I picked. It was $5 cheaper on Amazon than at Radio Shack.

This blue tooth device works for me. I have purchased ear-fitting devices that never fit properly and constantly have to be recharged. With Bluant Supertooth 3, I recharge about once a week. Works as advertised. I also look like a human while driving. Best of the bunch.

Pros -
Very good sound quality
Comes with everything you need, nothing else to buy
uses a mini USB charger so replacements will be easy to find
Cons -
Text-to-speech is not-so-clear
Why no mute button?!?!

I hate Bluetooth earsets. Beasides feeling like a dork I always feel like they are going to fall off. I have owned several models and every one had problems. I lost the last one which, come to think of it, is yet another problem with earsets. There is no state law requiring handfree cell phone use in Texas, however my employer has a policy requiring their use.

Based on positive reviews from mnay respected tech publications as well as user reviews here I decided to forego the hassel of an earset and buy the Supertooth 3 speakerphone.

So far the Supertooth 3 has met all of my needs and expectations. I was able to get it set-up in just a couple of munutes. Instructions are for wimps so I tossed them aside. The Supertooth 3 literally talked me through the whole process. My phone (an ancient LG CU405) is unable to transfer it's entire contact list but I was able to manually transfer one contact at a time. This is a tedious process but the blame is entirely on my phone.

The text-to-speech function will pronounce the names you associate with numbers transferred from the phone to the Supertooth 3. The speech is not very clear and seems to have trouble with common words like "home" (which sounded like "hum").
After setting it up I tried it out with a few calls. No one I talked with had any problems hearing me, nor I them. I use the speakerphone while driving a rather noisy pick-up truck at 65 mph.

Now, I need this speakerphone because I am on conference calls every day. Because of this I would really appreciate the addition of a mute button. For the life of me I can not imagine why this function has been left off. In fairness I knew this before making the purchase but decided the value of the other features was woth the price, despite the lack of a mute button.

The Blue ant doesn't work with my phone (DARE) and I don't have the receipt to send it back. A waste of money.

I must say that I am writing this first to warn other shoppers and second in the hope that BlueAnt will address this issue. This is not a bad device as long as it is used with one phone - in fact in that scenario its quite good. The good is that once its set up you dont need to touch it. It shuts itself off when you leave and connects when you get back to your car - awesome. Things get very messy though when you introduce a second phone and it seems that if one of those devices is an iPhone, now the #2 selling phone in the US, things totally fall apart. Although its specs say it supports up to 8 phones, the long and short of it is that its simply not true if one of those phones is an iPhone. See this reply from BlueAnt Tech Support:

"The Supertooth 3 is able to pair up to 8 devices but there is something on the Iphone that makes it differ from other phones. Once the Iphone is paired to any bluetooth device it takes priority. So if you were to switch the Supertooth 3 off of the Iphone and connect it to the other phone then try to re-connect back to the Iphone it would require the Supertooth to be completely re-paired to the device. This is only a issue with the Iphone as it does take priority over any bluetooth device. If you have any other questions or concerns please let me know."

I have no idea whose fault this really is but the effect is that the ST3 becomes a huge pain to use if you expect to use it with more than one phone and one of them is an iPhone. Re-pairing with an iPhone, although you'd think would not be a big deal, is a long and noisy process. The complication of having to re-pair comes from ST3's feature of downloading all your contacts from your phone to the ST3 so that it can announce callers by name. The problem is that this download process is slow and noisy, the ST3 verbally announces its progress over and over again as it sorts though your contacts: "10 contacts please wait.....20 contacts please wait.....30 contacts, please wait..." Having a few hundred contacts in my iPhone, which is not that hard since it syncs to my professional address book in my computer, this is a long long noisy process which I would be happy never to hear again. Again this process must occur anytime you switch any other phone back to the iPhone. Its very annoying to the point that I no longer wish to share the device with other drivers. Not really meeting the spec of support 8 phones at all. And nothing about this problem is indicated on the BA website in any area, even one called "Compatibility". It just shows an Apple logo - oh well.

According to BA they have no means to update the firmware on the ST3, so if any fix is to be had it would need to come from Apple. Not holding my breath.

I also was very disappointed that so much handling is involved to switch from one phone to another. My hope was that if a phone had been previously paired with the ST3 and only one of the phones is present, the ST3 and the phone would recognize each other automatically. This is sadly not the case. Even when things work properly, meaning neither phone is an iPhone, even in the normal case, the user is required to dig thru his or her phone's settings to re-request a connection to the bluetooth device. This seems unnecessary since from the handset's perspective, the ST3 was gone and is now back, there is no concern about another device having been used with the ST3. All this matters to me because I sometimes am sharing a vehicle with a less tech savvy user. My hope was to install the ST3, pair both phones and then depending on whether I was using the car or the other driver was using it, the ST3 would be smart and connect to whatever phone was present. Not the case. The other driver will need to learn to dig into phone's configurations and learn to deal with BT audio device selection. This is simply not going to happen. I don't think this scenario is uncommon. Many times there will be one geeky person who can set things up, and others for whom things just need to work. A husband and wife, the wife might geek out and make things work. If the husband uses the car, it should just work for him. Not the case with the ST3. Each user, whenever a switch from one handset to another is needed, would need to go into phone settings and ask for the audio device. Its a little nit on the surface. In practice it kind of dooms the device given that often when using the ST3 the driver find that the ST3 is not connecting. This means that the driver then needs to re-jigger the settings on his phone or face a call with no speakerphone, which is now a violation. The hope with the ST3 was that these sort of tasks would be eliminated for driver, its a success for one phone and sadly not the case of a shared vehicle or many phones.

If BA can address the scenario of a shared vehicle better this would be an amazing device. It should simply find any of the paired handsets and work with it with no user intervention. If more than one paired device is present it should have some sort of logic to resolve this or a smart way to handle it.

Speakerphones in cars are not like headsets. They are potentially shared by many users with varying levels of technical knowledge, these devices to be great need to handle those conditions better. Hopefully we will see BA improve here. If they do all the other strengths of this device would make it great.