Customer Reviews

2.4GHz Bluetooth v2.0 USB Dongle Adapter EDR for Windows Vista/XP/2000

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

I purchased this item to transfer video and photos from my Nokia cell phone. I installed it on my XP desktop, using the included CD drivers for the install. No upgrades were needed and the device picked up the signal from the Nokia immediately. I uploaded my files easily and the signal was great within about a 5' range.

Note that when you are prompted for a 'key', it's any series of numbers you put in. Then simply put the same password into the other bluetooth enabled device and you'll be good to go.

Vista recognized this device immediately and had drivers for it. No need to use the driver CD to install.

I was going to pay HP extra to install a bluetooth option, but I would have overpaid. This is the cheapest, most effective option you can buy and the seller got it to me quick. Don't hesitate to buy it.

Bargain Cell appears to be removing the CDs from their dongle clamshells. I ordered 4 dongles and none had the CD included. The drivers are not parts of Vista's online driver collection. No matching driver can be found online. This results in the dongles being useless and BargainCell keeping their S&H fee.

This overall, is a great product.
It comes in a ~very~ generic package, so I assumed this was a generic-like bluetooth adapter (It is very generic). It comes with a CD, and the bluetooth adapter in the picture. It's bluetooth 2.0 like it says, but it's USB 1.1, which was kind of a bummer... But Bluetooth 2.0 has 3Mbps transfer speed and USB 1.1 is 12Mbps, so even if it is 2.0, it won't make a difference.
The plastic casing on the adapter is kinda weak. And it wiggles a bit, so that kind of bugged me. I don't know if the CD is actually worth using because I am using Ubuntu 8.04. I'm not even close to a linux expert, so it took me about an hour and a half to get my phone connected and get my wireless headphones working. The transfer speed to the phone is fast, a good 20KB/S at the least (No transfer speed shown on Bluetooth communications) Took about a minute for 5.25 Megabytes.
Using the A2DP audio profile (High Quality Sound for the Bluetooth bandwidth), my headphones sound just as good as a $25 pair of wired headphones.
As for distance, I can walk around my whole house and only in one spot did I have a break, but the audio quality dropped the farther i got away but I never was disconnected (It was about 40 feet with 2-3 walls at all times).
Overall this is a good deal, I would recommend buying it if you want a cheap and decent bluetooth adapter. But the packaging indicated no company name at all anywhere, so that's a mark off.
Other than that, I would buy it.
It's REALLY great for transferring files to your phone. Yes, it is slow, but it's really annoying to have to use a cable.

REVIEW EDIT: After like 6 or 7 months of use, the plastic that holds the dongle together broke apart into half. A quick and easy fix is just to use clear tape and tape it back together, and mine was good as new. Still working great, over a year later.
Update: Still going. Just don't unplug/replug it in often and it'll work forever. Works great with Windows 7. No drivers or discs needed, it will do it all for you. Use BlueSoleil (its like 20 bucks... just gotta shop around though) cause it has way better bluetooth stuff than windows.

Pros - Cheap.
Cons -
Doesnt work.
Software on the CD didnt work
Software on the CD is just a freaking trial.
To get the full version of the software you need to pay.
To get a newer version of the software you need to buy it.

I almost feel like this is a scam to get you to buy software
that probably wont even work anyways.

I bought this for only one reason, to use my bluetooth headset with my PC. This product has failed to deliver even that.

I would NOT recommend this product even for the price. You are better of just spending the money and getting a quality product.

I bought this primarily to use with Skype on Windows Vista. The shipping took about a week to get to me, which isn't too bad.

It comes with IVT BlueSoleil version 2.7 which is outdated (the newest one is 6.2). I initially had problems getting this to work with Skype and my bluetooth headset, so I tried the newest version of BlueSoleil. This actually worked worse (kept saying my microphone wasn't configured correctly in skype), so I went back to the version included with the USB Bluetooth Adapter. The 2nd time I installed it, I got it to work without too much trouble. The program isn't entirely obvious to use if you've never dealt with bluetooth. The scanning for bluetooth devices and pairing between the adapter and your bluetooth device makes sense, but once it is recognized you should be sure to search the device for services so that you can enable the device to do whatever it is that it is supposed to do.

The BlueSoleil program does interface with skype so that you can answer and hang up your calls using your headset (if supported on the headset).

I found the range to be not good despite what other say. I can't walk much further than about 6 feet from my computer before it starts to get crackly and bad reception. This may be because my computer is in a corner and when I walk away the signal has to travel through a wall. I have not tried it in a wide open scenario so I cannot comment on that. But it definitely does not go through walls very well!

In general (and this may apply more directly to my headset [plantronics 520] than to the receiver) the sound quality is good but there is definitely some static/crackling every once in awhile. So it's not really a clean sound/connection. It's usually not enough to bother me or the other party and generally people say I sound clear using the device.

If I were to do it all again, I think I would buy a higher quality adapter so that I can be sure the crackling/static is not the fault of my bluetooth adapter. For what it's worth the crackling is also present on when connected to my cell phone so it could be my headset's fault.

I have to say bluetooth is a pretty disappointing technology and is not well implemented with current Windows Operating Systems in that it requires third party software and is not simply plug and play.

But for $5, you can't really go wrong with this product.

As others warned, this dongle likely will not end up working. You do NOT get a CD, but when directed to a web site for the SW, you are given an outdated, demo version of REQUIRE BlueSoleil SW (2.9 vs 6.0). After many failed efforts, and getting a new device, I finally kind of got this to work, only to encounter the dreaded "demo period up, please purchase upgrade", and this is NOT cheap...

Stay far, far away...I spent about 4-6 hours trying to deal with this, and if you add this to the almost free cost, you will not want to bother!

I did get this "thing" to have a headset, keyboard and a mouse on a PC who is at 20 feet from me (on a big screen). Well this PC is a Vista 64bits. The software v-2 who come with-it doesn't work on this version of vista, I did need to download the version 6. This version is a 15 days trial and I need to pay 30$ (20 euro...) to unlock-it. I did install the trial program, it looks good but I can't make work more than one device at the time. The software seam to be capable but...
Once I did get the keyboard and the mouse going for less than 5 minutes. As soon I try to add the headset, everything went down. After 3 hrs, reinstalling the software, crashing the PC (who never did crash before) also about 20 times the program did freeze... then I give-up on this device and try-the set-up on my laptop with internal Bluetooth. The keyboard, the mouse, the headset, the cell and the I-pod work all together, in less than 5 minutes...

This is a piece of "work "looks good on paper, look good on the screen but I give-up on it. How they think I will get a 30$ software when the device doesn't work...

Also, I did find-out, this device is design to work after windows is running and doesn't initialize itself when you reboot. You need a lease another pointing device to establish the connections and also you need a other keyboard to put your password to log-in... I guess I have to do some homework to figure if there some devices who work at windows start-up...

This is my first bluetooth connector. I'd heard that a lot of them can be flaky in combination with different OS platforms and connecting devices so I decided to try this one since it was inexpensive. I've had no trouble with it. I've used it with both the official Lego IDE, Brickcc and RobotC under Vista to connect to a Lego NXT brick. I've also used it with Ubuntu 8 running CWiiD as an interface for the Wiimote. Just before writing this review, I ordered a second so I wouldn't have to swap between computers.

This company swears up and down it works with windows 7 and it does not. Windows 7 needs the driver and it can't find it. Don't waste your time and money on this item because they're just unloading them on us because they know we won't return them. This company sent me about 5 emails telling me how it would work with windows 7 and they have no idea what they're talking about.

My primary reason for getting this dongle was to use my bluetooth headset to listen to music on my pc at work. Got the dongle in the mail a few days after I ordered, but didn't get the software cd with it.. so I downloaded the latest version of Bluesoleil. Well, this didn't work well at all. It would connect, then it wouldn't. It wouldn't play music in stereo. So I did a lot of reading on the internet... Tried using the windows bluetooth driver, and it wouldn't play any music. So then I read that the bluesoleil software before version 6.2 worked much better. So I downloaded version 6.0.227.0 and it is working perfectly now.

I didn't think the dongle was providing A2DP, but it was the software, not the hardware. I was getting ready to buy a new (name brand) dongle, but this $0.99 dongle works great!!!

If anyone is having issues with the dongle, try searching for version 6.0.227.0 of the software!