Customer Reviews

BlueAnt Supertooth 3 Bluetooth Hands-Free Speakerphone (Black)

5 star:		(277)
4 star:		(153)
3 star:		(60)
2 star:		(43)
1 star:		(49)

 

 

I have been selling wireless since 1996 and have used multiple headsets, hands free solutions, etc. This has the best voice quality of any in-car set up I have used. I was using a Jawbone, which I still have, and is excellent. I am just tired of having something hanging on my ear X hours a day. I am a gadget freak for sure but I am tired of the tool on my ear.

I made some calls at 80mph in my wife's minivan on the turnpike to friends to get their feedback before using it for business and they did no know I was on a speakerphone...that's good enough for me. The voicedialing, as with any voicedialing feature, sucks. They all suck. The voice answer did not work either - say 'ok' to answer...yeah my kids were laughing at me saying 'ok' 6 times and then the call went to voicemail because it never answered. But I expected that...so just reach up and tap the answer button...no worries. My concern was voice quality, and it passed the test.

The auto phonebook transfer to a blackberry will not work from the device but will work if you do it from your BBerry's blutooth menu and push it to the device. It took about 10 minutes for my 1500+ contacts to transfer. I only did that so I could hear the name of the inbound caller, which is cool. The reality is we all have our phones right next to us when the call comes in and we can look at the phone's screen if need be.

01/09 UPDATE: I got a new car and well...I have to turn this off for business calls. It's just not good enough. What changed? Well, just my car. There is nothing worn with the device. So maybe the cars insulation is coming into play? I am driving a C6 Corvette and I am certain it is not as insulated as my previous car (Audi TT) or my wife's minivan. That being said, if your car is well insulated from road noise you should love this device. Cheers, Josh.

Being a fan of the supertooth 2, I got the supertooth 3 for the text to speech feature which is supposed to announce the caller's name based on your address book. Problem is that I could never get it to say the caller's name, instead it will only say the number. I'm using it with a blackberry 8830 and have also tried it with a Mot Krzr with the same results. Contacted the company over the phone who's support is great but they couldn't get it to say the caller's name either and suggested the I send it back. Not good for a new product.

I'm sending it back and we'll see what happens with the next one.

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Update 6-13-08:
We still can't get the ST3 to announce the callers name either. We are on our third one after returning two of them. In our company we have BB8830's and Pearls. Tried on both with no luck, only phone numbers are announced. Also tried on two Mot KRZR's also with no luck either. Called vendor three times now and they had me do the batt thing also. They finally said that our vendor may have had a "bad batch". This one is really hard to believe. I called our vendor who is not happy that this "may be the case". I'm now waiting for blueant to send me an envelope to send the unit back and to then send me one directly from the factory.

I'm not holding my breath on this. Guess it's like software... never by version 1.0 of anything. For a few weeks, there was nothing out there (internet search) that pointed to this problem but now it's everywhere.

Aside from that, the unit performs as good as the Supertooth Light verison.


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7-3-08: Still haven't received the product return package from the manufacturer. We are still getting the Supertooth 3 device for clients though because the other "advertised" features do work and work well and so far is the most "hands free".

After much research here on Amazon, I decided to order the BlueAnt Supertooth3 to solve the dilemma of California's new cellphone law. I did not want any such product, but some of the available solutions are definitely less wanted than others. The Plantronics 510 Voyager would be good for a person who doesn't mind wearing gear and doesn't use sunglasses or other glasses, but I'm not a headset/earpiece kinda gal. The BlueAnt Light, with the protruding mic, sounded like a major irritation just because of the temperamental mic that would get stuck. For me, the lack of Caller ID made it unacceptable. I don't answer unnecessary calls while driving. The Jabra speakerphone does not come with a home charger. That is ridiculous, and I would never buy a product that required another purchase, when it should come with it in the first place. I saw so few reviews for the Supertooth3, which was disappointing, but decided to write one myself.

I received it yesterday. It took just under an hour to charge, and it comes with a home charger, car charger and two magnet clips. It wouldn't sync the phonebook from my LG8300, not even one at a time contacts. This means that Caller ID announces the incoming number, not the name, but that is okay with me. I had never used voice dial on my phone, but the Supertooth booklet instructed that one voice tag was necessary on the phone in order to use voice dial. So I made one voice dial call from my phone, and then tried it on the Supertooth. It worked fine. I can say, "Call Sonia Home", and it dials Sonia's home phone as opposed to her cellphone. In order to enable handsfree voice answer, one must depress the volume button until it gives the voice message that it has been done. Another reviewer of the BlueAnt Light said that the flashing blue light was driving her insane, but that light lets you know the device is working as it should. For some reason, it was not flashing right after I got it and not working, but I assume that is because I did not know how to use it.

The most annoying thing by far is in the way I have to use it, due to the fact that if I get out of my car and am within 30 feet, the BlueAnt will answer the call and I can't take it on my phone. I make many short trips and in and out of buildings at a short distance. So I have to turn off the Supertooth3 before I get out of the car, and turn it back on when I get back in. What I don't know is whether it is necessary to re-enable the voice answer by depressing the volume button every time I turn it on, but that is what I have been doing. I also wonder if these devices are made to withstand the extreme heat in the car in summer. I certainly hope so, because we have weeks at a time of 100+ degrees. I also hope it is made sturdily enough to handle being turned off and on frequently.

The voice quality of calls both ways is better than the Garmin Nuvi 360 by far. The magnets are strong. The clip was kind of hard to get on my thick visor, and I won't be able to use the business card slots on the back of the visor, but the device is small and it looks cute. It's easy to take it with you and reattach it. The battery life is said to be 800 hours if you never turn it off, and much more if you do. I will be turning it off every night.

I'd say this is the best product for this purpose, which for me is simply to comply with a law that I wish had not been passed. I find all devices to be a distraction, and a cellphone alone is less distraction than in combination with other things. Guess what? Californians can still text message while they drive! Doesn't that make you want to visit? ;)

Just as the first reviewer. I'm having the same problem with my supertooth 3. I have an Iphone and it will only announce the number not the name and Blueant requested I send it back. I will update this as soon as I recieve the new one. And yes customer service at Blueant is excellent......However, I do pay shipping back to them....that's not so good

AND NOW FOR THE UPDATE : 7/5/08 My third Blue Ant st3 is all that !.....this one works perfectly with my iphone , the first two worked fine but did not say the name of the caller.....the early models of st3 do not work with all phones.....it was software issue that has been resolved....the key here is if indeed your having problems....getting an st3 with a higher serial #....Blue Ant customer service is outstanding....Talk to Dave. he'll make it right. .... oh and i would now give this product AND OUTSTANDING CUSTOMER SERVICE a five star rating !!!

I really wanted to give this 5 stars but it just wasn't perfect. How about 4.5 stars. The product pretty much worked as advertised. Uploading the address book was a snap. In minutes I had the product up and running. Controls were easy to use and voice features appeared to work just fine. I spent some time using the product in a variety of conditions and everything appears to work perfectly. Incoming sound appeared to be very good and I had no trouble hearing callers even in somewhat noisy conditions. Callers reported to me that my voice sounded a bit hollow or had a slight echo but they had no trouble hearing me. Pairing and unpairing has worked perfectly so I have been very happy using this. It has been a much better solution to me then a earpiece. Unlike other users, I actually had more trouble with the number caller ID then the name caller ID. It called out the names perfectly but seemed to have occasional trouble completing saying the number. At times it would cut part of the number off. On to the pros and cons:

Pros- Easy to set up and use. Generally does everything it advertises athough not quite perfectly. Good battery life and excellent sound caracteristics, easy pairing and unpairing make this a joy to use. The case is attractive and very functional with the magnetic clips that let you unhook the unit quickly. Voice controls work perfectly.

Cons- Instruction set could be better. You have to sync the address book when you add a new contact. An automated sync would have been a very nice feature. Caller ID software need just a bit more work.

Overall a very nice package. I recommend this product.

I did a lot of research online and this one seemed to be a good choice for the iPhone. Well, it paired perfectly with the iPhone; it downloaded all 260+ phonebook entries; the text-to-speech is very good and it understands my voice command (ok, accept call, etc). The only thing missing is voice dialing, but this is really an iPhone problem, that hopefully will eventually be provided by Apple. I'm really happy about the purchase.

I was hesitant to purchase this product given the prior reviews that the text to speech was not working. However, I was more focused on the sound quality, so I took a chance and ordered.

I have to say that overall this is a great product. I have a Pantech Duo, and it took only a few seconds to pair with the BlueAnt. It would not transfer my phone book automatically, so I had to beam each contact individually, which was somewhat of a pain, but, it is a simple process. I was surprised when I received my first call that the text to speech worked fine. It announced the name directly from my phone book. Apparently, any bug with this technology has been fixed.

The call quality is good. I won't say excellent, as the person at the other end of the line usually can tell it is a speakerphone. You do not sound like you are in a tunnel, however, so it is not too bad.

The BlueAnt will also answer calls to voice commands, which is also a handy feature. Simply saying "answer" or "ok" will start the call. It also lets you know when the call is disconnected.

I also like the fact the BlueAnt announces it connects with your phone when you get in the car. This is important because there is no display screen on the unit. That is actually one of the few complaints I have. I understand that this announces calls by name or number, but it would still be nice to have a display screen to look at as well.

All in all, I am pleased with the purchase.

At first, I absolutely LOVED this product. I'm usually fairly critical of new technology, especially Bluetooth products, but this one just wowed me. I was giddy about it. I was ready to e-mail all my friends and family telling them their lives would be better by buying this. (I'm serious.) The ST3 was a smart device. It performed well. I even bought a second one... before realizing it had a MAJOR -- I mean *MAJOR* -- flaw in the design. I confirmed this with their tech support as well...

Basically, the ST3 can be paired to 8 devices (or maybe its 6), BUT it will only automatically reconnect to the last device it was connected to. Here's what this means in the real world...

Let's say you have a car, a bluetooth phone and you bought the ST3 and paired it to your phone. (Not too hard to imagine if you're reading this.) But let's say your spouse also has a bluetooth phone (also not too hard to imagine) and you've paired it to the ST3. The first day out with your ST3... you think everything's great; it works well with your phone. Next day, your spouse gets into the car. The ST3 won't connect to her phone. But wait - you paired it - it should work. Why isn't it? Something must be wrong. Here's what's going on: the ST3 is waiting for your phone. Sorry, you can't do anything about it. It won't connect to your spouse's phone. Not unless your spouse wants to fiddle in their bluetooth menu after getting into the car. That's it. Yep. Believe it.

Technical support confirmed this. They said our phones should have an easy feature to reconnect. Well, I have a Treo 750 (WM6) and my wife has an iPhone 3G. Neither phone can do this. It's unpair and repair, which takes anywhere from 1 minute to 30 minutes depending on the number of contacts that are transfered.

So, at the end of the day, only one of our phones can effectively be paired to the ST3.

I have no idea why the ST3 can't just look for and automatically connect to a paired device that is in range. I realize there might be occasions when both you and your wife are in the car, but the ST3 should connect on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Sorry BlueAnt. Everything else is so so good with this product, but this is a huge disappointment.

I received my Supertooth 3 today (6-25-08). It paired very easily with my Samsung Blackjack. Transferring my contacts was not as easy but that appears to be the fault of my phone, not the Supertooth 3.

Apparently, the Blackjack doesn't support automatic transfer of contacts so each contact had to be transferred individually. Luckily, I don't have an enormous amount of contacts to transfer. I probably transferred about 60 contacts and it probably took me about 30 seconds per contact; thus, it took me about 30 minutes to transfer all of my contacts.

Upon transferring the contacts, I was happy to find that the system was announcing the contact names properly when I received calls from various people. I didn't have to do anything special to make this happen. I'm not sure why so many people have had problems getting the system to announce names (instead of just numbers).

The call clarity sounds good thus far but, having only had the device for less than a day, I have yet to hold a conversation with the system in a fast-moving vehicle. I will update this review with some additional feedback on call clarity in a week or two.

Overall, I'm very happy with this device thus far. My mom has asked me to buy her one for her birthday, which is coming up next month.

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7-6-08 Update:

I've been using the Supertooth 3 for a couple of weeks now. On my end, most calls can be heard very well. Most people on the other end of the call have reported to me they can tell that I'm on a speaker phone but still can hear me reasonably well. The Supertooth 3 owner's manual mentions that if you turn the volume down a bit on your phone that it may help with call clarity. I have tried this and people on the other end of the line did notice a slight improvement afterwards.

Overall, I'm still very pleased with the purchase. The battery life seems to be very good. My two biggest complaints, which are actually very minor, are that (1) the unit rattles a bit when I'm travelling at high rates of speed and (2) I've inadvertantly knocked down the unit a few times when I've flipped the sun visor down to block the sun out of my eyes.

Finally, it seems that some of the prior reviewers got discouraged by the fact that the automatic phonebook transfer was unsuccessful with their particular phone models and, as a result, they assumed the Supertooth 3 would simply not be able to announce any caller names. This is not necessarily true. These reviewers should still have the ability to transfer their phonebook contacts one at a time (with my phone - the Samsung Blackjack - this is accomplished by "beaming" the contacts). After doing that, the Supertooth 3 should announce the individually-transferred contact names when they call. If it is too tedious to transfer ALL contacts individually, one may still be well advised to individually transfer a select group of contacts with whom he/she communicates most frequently.

I bought the ST3 about a week ago and it sends cancer rays all over my car everytime I use it.. I can feel it!!... ...

Besides that, this little gem is perfect. I didn't want to be one of those tools walking around like a cyborg, so I found this and couldn't be happier. I have a BB Perl and setup was a snap- I had to manually push my address book just after a failed automatic attempt from ST3, but it was no problem. I used the ST3 extensively and have had no issues so far.

The reconnect feature (based on vibration) is brilliant and I say thank you every time my new British lady-friend tells me that I'm connected.

Call quality is also outstanding - multiple people have told me that they cannot tell that they're on speaker and the volume is plenty loud going both ways.

Cheers