Customer Reviews

Jabra Cruiser Bluetooth Car Kit, Speakerphone [Retail Packaging]

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(54)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Saw the reviews here - many are just plain incorrect, very likely they did not bother to read the manual, which as the quickstart guide says 'the full version is online at jabra'.

A few examples:

Voice dialing: If your phone has this capability - you can voice dial no problem: Record the voiceprint for a number (via your phones feature), preferably while using the speakerphone so its better matched, then to use it 'press' - hold button for approx 1sec - (as opposed to tap, which is means 'quick click") the main answer button then say name - works fine, even with an old moto razr phone.

Power: Again, RTM - to save power (a great feature), the speakerphone sleeps after 10 minutes: To wake up, rather than cycle the less handy power switch, simply tap the main answer button

Bright lights: There is a way to go into night mode: "Press FM and volume up button simultaneously when the speakerphone is on. The light will then turn off. You can turn the lights back on with another press."

C'mon folks, take the two minutes to read the actual manual.

As for the rest - I've only had it a little while - the voice quality seems fine, the FM works great when the convertible top is down (Not often right now, even in CA) and the thing works quite well so far.

Bonus: The charger comes in two pieces so that you can use the USB to micro USB cable with your computer to charge it if you want. Conversely, I can now charge my old razr with by plugging in my USB to mini USB into its lighter adapter. Handy.

No affiliation with jabra - just picky about uninformed reviews

I love Bluetooth but was never really satisfied with the audio quality of my Bluetooth headset when driving so I thought I would try buying a device that was specifically designed to let you take calls in a vehicle. This is a really cool product! It does all the basic stuff you would expect in terms of taking phone calls but has the added feature of an FM transmitter so you can use your car speakers instead of the smaller built-in speaker. Now incoming call volume level is never an issue. If your car radio has RDS (I forget what it stands for but if you see artist and song title when listening to a radio station then you have it) you can see the incoming phone number on your radio display. Cooler still is that it supports Bluetooth stereo so I can stream music directly from my phone (or iPod Touch) and listen to it on my car speakers. The Cruiser has convenient PLAY/PAUSE and SKIP Forward/Back buttons too. If you are streaming music and you get an incoming call, the music is automatically paused until you hang up. Last but not least, the Cruiser can be connected to two phones AT THE SAME TIME. This is very convenient since I have to carry around my work phone and personal phone all the time. No longer do I need to decide which of my phones to have connected. Nice work Jabra!

I've had the Cruiser for less than a week. So far, it's been an excellent experience. I use it paired with an iphone for telephone conversation as well as for listening to music & podcasts in the car. I have it clipped to my visor directly in front of me.

Pluses --

- Voice guided pairing was a snap. I like the voice announcements in general, telling you what mode it is in, etc.
- Very good sound quality and noise rejection, even in a small sports car. It's not perfect, but works at least as well as any BT headset that I've owned. The people I call never complain about my voice quality, and I'd give it about an 8/10 for incoming call sound quality.
- FM transmitter works very well ... as well or better than the dedicated "beamers" I've had. I use it mostly in this mode, listening to calls & music through the car stereo speakers. Music sounds good. It's easy to tune FM frequencies to a blank spot, although you really can't do it while driving.

Minuses --

- none really that I've found

Too early to tell --

- battery life
- haven't tried simultaneously connecting to two devices, as advertised

Thumbs up.

I have an iPhone, an amazing miniature, hand-held computer and basically a pretty bad phone. Probably half the blame on the iPhone belongs to AT&T and their spotty service, but that's another story. When hand-held, the iPhone works moderately well, however, the speakerphone aspect of it sucks big-time. Horrible!

I was tired of wearing a bluetooth device in my ear when driving, fearing I'd loose it, requiring a charge every three days, and concerned over unknown long-term medical side-effects from such a device.

When looking at various bluetooth ear devices at the local Apple store, one of the employees suggested I check this Jabra Cruiser device out. He said they carried it at the Apple store for about two months, then they just stopped carrying it. He told me the general feedback he got from Apple customers regarding the device was terrific - great sound quality, clarity, even the ability to broadcast via your FM capacity in your auto the incoming calls as well as music from your phone device.

While you give up the portability of a bluetooth headset with this visor clip-on speakerphone, the ease of use and function I believe vastly outweighs the issue of portability. The clarity is completely there, I've been using mine for three weeks on a daily basis and have had yet to re-charge it. It's broadcast distance is perhaps a problem in that you can walk away from your vehicle, enter a store and be 100 feet away and yet it holds the connection with your phone. I have discovered that when I pull into my garage at home, I need to turn off the unit, otherwise it will seize the calls when I'm at home unless I disable the bluetooth function on my iPhone. It's now become a habit when I enter my car in the morning to turn on the Cruiser, and within seconds I hear the synthetic voice say "connected". When I arrive home, I now automatically turn it off when entering the garage, and it says, "powered off".

I am completely satisfied with this product - it's a whole lot cheaper than purchasing a new vehicle with bluetooth built in...

I have used the older Jabra SP700 and returned it, and replaced it with the Jabra Cruiser and its much better, even in my old noisy car people can hear me well, I was very surprised! In my newer car, it does not fit on the thicker visor. I use it with a Blackberry 9800 and very happy with the whole product overall. I do use FM to play music from my blackberry and I like the way the music control keys operate the media player on the blackberry. With any FM product, the sound is not as clear with a cable, but the Cruiser is decent and I have no other choice since I have no other inputs to the radio. The bluetooth signal is very strong, too strong, I park outside of store and when I'm inside It will pickup, but there is an on off switch on it if you know your going to be too close to the car , switch it off. Instead of beeps when connected, you get a woman's voice, she is there with you there to help out, set your fm, tells you the number of the incoming call, and other instructions.

I am surprised how more advanced the Cruiser is over the SP700, and this is worth taking a look at. I did get it for $49 at costco ($20 off sale) and I am very happy with it so far.

I bought the Jabra SP720 to replace a Parrot Minikit that I've owned for a about 2 years. I thought the Minikit was a great little portable bluetooth speaker, but after two years, the non-replacable battery was shot and it was time for something new.

Pros:

-quick pairing time. (the Audio prompts for when the device is connected, powered off and in pairing mode are very useful) You can tell that Jabra designed this product to be used without taking attention off driving)

-Audio quality is superb (other party never notices I'm on bluetooth and the audio of speaker is loud and clear enough)

-Battery life (this is where I was amazed. I used this device every day and today was the first day I charge it after over a month of ownership. I'm astounded!)

-A2DP support. My iphone has the ability to stream audio over the speaker. Not so important for listening to music, but there are some GPS applications on my iphone that benefit greatly from streaming audio over the bluetooth speaker rather than the iPhones internal speaker)

- able to listen to phone calls over FM transmitter, meaning I can listen to the other person on the phone over my car's stereo (my coworker thought I installed a factory bluetooth in my car!!)

-SP720 tells you the incoming callers phone number over the speaker AND can display the phone number over your car stereo unit if you car stereo supports RDS.


Cons:

the device has a built in FM transmitter which is a cool feature to have. Unfortunately, like most FM transmitters, they do not work so well in urban areas. Its hard to get the Sp720 to find a station that doesnt have interference.


I'm VERY happy I bought the Jabra Sp720 instead of spending over $800 to add on bluetooth in my BMW. The Jabra is fantastic. BUY IT NOW! Dont even consider Parrot.

I wanted a bluetooth car speaker kit to use with my iphone 3gs in my porsche boxster, but I was very hesitant about their effectiveness in a convertible. Finally decided to give it shot given the amount of time I spend in my car going from meeting to meeting. I bought and tested the new Blue Ant S4 ($100 from Best Buy)that just came out and the Jabra Cruiser ($52 from Amazon with free shipping). I thought the full voice command capapbilities of the Blue Ant S4 were nifty, but didn't always work in my convertible at least, and it was frustrating enough to return it. The Blue Ant S4 probably works much better in a hardtop car, and it has a slightly better sound quality on both the sending and receiving end of a call as compared to the Jabra Cruiser.

HOWEVER, the Cruiser is nearly as good as a speakerphone as the Blue Ant at only half the cost, PLUS it has the FM transmitter, which is much better for hearing callers over my radio at highway speeds than the Blue Ant speaker by itself. The Cruiser is easy to set up and very usable even in my convertible (top up of course)at 75 mph. At lower street speeds (30-40 mph#, the sound quality reported by my listeners was great. FM transmitter works very well in my car for both conversations and even better for streaming music/GPS directions #which was an important feature to me#. I've always had good luck with other FM transmitters in my car since the radio antenna is embedded in my front windshield. Those who have complained about the transmitter being too weak probably have the antenna located farther away or in the rear of the car. If your radio has RDS capability #i.e. it displays the name and artist of song playing on a station), the Cruiser will also show the incoming caller's number on the radio display while also announcing the number. This feature's more of a "gee whiz" gadget than of real functional value.

The Cruiser is not perfect: It does not download contacts on my iphone as advertised for any phones with PBAP protocol. Confirmed this problem with their customer support. At first, it was very annoying, as I'd like to HEAR the name of the person who's calling. The Blue Ant S4 was great at this as it easily downloaded my contacts. However, since my iphone sits on a mount (I also use it for GPS), I can easily see who's calling on the iphone right away so this problem was not a deal breaker. Cruiser does activate the voice command on the iphone, but it works about 50% of the time. But then the Blue Ant also only worked about 50% of the time on this same feature. Again, this is probably attributable to my car being a rag top rather than a hard top. The FM transmitter sometimes fades in and out of stereo. It's more annoying because of the stereo symbol flickering on the radio display than due to a major degradation in sound quality. A quick turning off/on of the FM transmitter button solved this problem easily, and the stereo signal locked back in. The play/pause button on the Cruiser took a few tries before play/pausing the ipod. The track back/forward buttons do not work on the ipod. It may work on other phones as reported by other reviewers.

Overall, as the title of my review states, the Cruiser represents great value for the money at $52 as I would have been happy at its list price of $100! I'm THRILLED to have a bluetooth speakerphone that works so well even in my convertible. The minor flaws are more than outweighed by its substantive functionality.

I don't understand why some folks decided to give this Jabra Cruiser less than 5 stars. I would guess that most people probably have issues with their phones or perhaps they're just to picky. Anyway, first thing I noticed was the Jabra's beautiful design and it's gem like ornate appearance which is sure to compliment the interior of any vehicle, it really is pretty. The unit comes complete with an easy to read owners manual, PC/USB charging cable and a cigarette lighter plug which accommodates the USB charging cable for use in your vehicle. After charging, I turned on the Cruiser and it immediately spoke to me with very vivid pairing instructions. within less than a minute the pairing was finished. The next noticeable feature was just how loud and clear the Cruiser sounded just using it's internal speaker. I have never heard a Bluetooth speaker sound this great, I actually had to turn down the volume on the Cruiser. After about 15 minutes of getting to know the Cruiser I took it for a spin in my 15 year old pickup truck with all the windows open. I had no troubles whatsoever hearing or operating the cruiser at 55 MPH. My callers reported hearing road and wind noise but they had also reported that the noise was not overwhelming or obnoxious. After about 20 minutes, I rolled up the windows and made another call. I was astounded, I did not have to yell at the cruiser for my callers to hear me, I spoke normally and again my callers reported no troubles. Now it was time to test the FM Radio feature. I pressed the FM button on the cruiser and it told me to tune to 88.3 Mega Hertz. I tuned my car stereo to that channel, started the MP3 player on the phone, I was blown away! My music sounded really good and so did my callers. I was able to adjust the bass and treble settings on my car stereo for an even greater listening experience. There was a tiny bit of hissing from the car stereo but that minor hiss was only heard when there was no music or voice going through the car stereo. The moment I started playing music the hiss disappeared. The unit is packed with features, I used it's voice dialing and redial functions with no troubles. The play, fast forward and rewind buttons worked very well. One thing I would like to point out, some of the music player buttons may be somewhat difficult to locate while driving, otherwise if your in a lot someplace, you won't have any troubles using them. A few more things, the red, green and blue status lights on the front of the Cruiser are not at all intrusive to your vision while driving at night; If you find that they are, it's very simple to turn them off. The Cruiser is small and light weight enough to toss in your shirt pocket, I even used it while it was in my pocket. I also used it on my home stereo. I walked around the house and listened to my music and made phone calls using my home stereo theater system. The most important feature for me was it's ability to power itself off after leaving the vehicle and the ease of turning it on after entering. I walked far away from my pickup until my phone indicated it had dropped the Bluetooth link. As I walked back to the truck, the Jabra and my phone immediately connected with each other and I didn't have to do anything to make that happen. Now the power test. I went into a store and after about 30 minutes, I knew the Cruiser had to automatically turn off by this time. As I got back into the pickup, I tapped the talk button, the power on the Cruiser immediately came on and then automatically connected to the phone, it doesn't get any easier than that.

In a nutshell, It's a great product and I'm really enjoying my new Jabra Cruiser.
For those who need to know, I use a new Motorola Brute I-680 along with a Palm Pilot Wi-Fi and bluetooth addition
I used the free shipping option and the package made it to my home in two days.

I have had many headsets including the best of the best and never been as happy as I am now with this product. The battery life is incredible considering I use it for streaming music to my car stereo while i'm in the car and then take/make calls as well. Bluetooth sync works perfectly. Well thought out product. Works just as well on it's own as it does connecting through my car stereo. Highly recommended.

I rarely write reviews. But had to write one for the Jagra Cruiser. I was impressed with pausing music when you receive a call. Once the phone call was over, your music would come back on automatically. It does exactly what is says it does. No problem with pairing my IPhone 3G; Love the look and design of the Jabra; hardly takes up any space on my visor. I drive a Ford FX4, and have no problems with hearing calls in my truck. I asked my brother how did I sound, he said it sounded good on his end. You won't regret buying one.