Customer Reviews

Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Music Receiver (Black)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Pair a Blackberry Curve 8310 (or iPone) with the MBR-100 and plug the MBR-100 into the auxiliary jack on in your Mazda3 center counsole storage bin and you have a really slick setup for not a lot of money... I have used a number of bluetooth headsets and find the Sony MBR-100 to be very well behaved. Add a Sony car charger to the mix and you never need to remove he device from the car. The device does appear to work while charging but with a bit of a buzz so best to charge with the device not paired. The sound is as good as a direct connection via 3.5mm.

At the time of purchase of this, I was looking for a device to use my bluetooth phone as an mp3 player and Audible player, using headphones or a cassette adapter in my vehicle. The connection with my phone was easy to establish, and the device plugs simply into a standard 1/8 stereo jack. It worked well, for over a year, until I lost it. In the year of its life, 3 main problems emerged.
#1 The power jack is proprietary and horrible. Very fragile, requires perfect support under the device and cord to maintain connection.
#2 Sound quality was ok at best, but during passages of electronic music, an additional electronic noise from the adapter became evident.
#3 Very low output of sound. On headphones, even at the highest setting on my phone (the device has no way to adjust volume on it) it was often hard to hear narrators over minimal ambient noise. When hooked up to my car stereo, i often had to run the stereo near top volume just to get adequate listening levels.

All in all, the device performed well, but the 3 problems led me to purchase another device, the Jabra BT 3030 stereo headset, which in 1 day has beaten this device in all 3 problem areas. It uses a standard usb miniport to charge, it has adjustable and loud volume on the device, and sound quality is much improved. It is early yet with my Jabra, but I am very excited by the upgrades. Oh, and it's 25$ less on Amazon!

It is a great product but the battery life is not good. It would be nice if it could tell you when it needs to be charged instead of just dying on you. The Motorola headset does a better job at telling you when is about to stop working.

I have used this device daily for about 3 weeks. I was about to return it because I could not make it do what the instructions said. A search of the internet turned up the problem. The instructions were wrong. Hold the button longer than it says, and it works fine. Been perfect ever since. The audio is good. Not perfect, but very good. Certainly for car with road noise anyway. Battery lasts a long time between charges. Now I can listen to the music library I put on my cell phone. I love it. A little cheaper than an MP3 but sound quality that isn't much worse. Just remember, hold the button for more than 5 seconds, and it will blink green/red just like it says. Stupid instructions.

This product reflects a very good compromise of function, form, and quality. It has excellent battery life (better than I expected), very good sound quality at its price point (my Sony Ericsson W880i produces better sound through the MBR-100 than an iPod connected directly to an amplifier), and fits in a beautifully crafted, compact package.

A huge bonus is that it plays nicely with multiple devices. My Toshiba Portege R500, my Sony Ericsson W880i and my wife's Sony Ericsson S500i are all paired with the device. If one music source is not streaming audio, it will allow the next device to connect (once paired) and stream audio without having to touch it. No human intervention is required once paired for the first time.

The way we have it connected allows either of us to come home and press play on our phones to have immediate listening music in the house. It's excellent and, as I've mentioned, it sounds quite nice.

I would recommend this product to anyone who seeks to eliminate some wires from their setup or who wants to just hop in the car and stream audio without "plugging in" to anything.

Just remember you might have to start your music session by manually initiating the connection from your device prior to playing (you do not have to touch the MBR-100, but you may need to ask your phone / device to connect first).

i looked all over for a portable bluetooth receiver i could connect to my cars audio input. supprisingly there are very few and i bought the blackberry one first only to find out you have to plug it in to make it work ( no battery ) it was a good device but i wanted battery powered to keep it hidden from sight and to eliminate another plug in device for my car. this one does exactly what it is supposed to do and it sounds GREAT !!

my iphone synced easily but you can not use it for calls, only music and videos so that is the only fault i can find........... finally sony made something i like

mike

I bought the MBR-100 because I was tired of plugging my iPhone into my BMW's auxiliary port. The cord started to get annoying and because my 530 had a retrofitted AUX jack (which is located in the glovebox) it was even more of a hassle. I decided to try the iPhone's built-in Bluetooth A2DP audio capabilities. Although pairing with the iPhone didn't go smoothly, it does work beautifully after paired. I have the very latest software, so I can tell you it should work if you do too. The sound is close to CD quality and nearly identical to directly plugging into the headphone jack when I did a comparison. As others have noticed, I wish there was an output volume adjustment on it because the level is a tad low. iPhone doesn't allow for any volume adjustments while transmitting Bluetooth audio. Bonus is that calls are transmitted through the MBR-100 making a really nice speakerphone for the iPhone. You have to turn the iPhone's Bluetooth off and back on or else it stays connected and drains the battery on the MBR-100. Not its fault.. more an iPhone quirk. Still gauging battery life as of now after making sure it goes to standby. I can tell you Sony's charger plug absolutely sucks however. I'm going to baby it so it will last.

This device pairs with no problem with the HP iPaq 6515 Pocket PC phone. It comes with various cables for connecting in different situations. You can use it with a cassette adapter to play the sound over your car stereo. You can plug headphones into it. Or, you can connect it to the line-in jacks of your home stereo. Handy gadget to have when you want to serve up some music in many different settings. The sound was a bit rough sounding at some points, possibly due to not being able to adjust the volume for it with the iPaq 6515. This may be a limitation of the cell phone and not the MBR-100. But, it is nice to have in a pinch.

Excellent gadget. I use it with my Sony S500I. Record my music onto a M2 card, and I then plug this device into the mp3 adaptor or auxiliary port on the car stereo and your set to go.

Music sounds good, bluetooth works great!

Can't really review this product because it wouldn't pair with my iPhone (3.0). My iPhone would see it but when it denied the password. Talking to Sony customer service was no help -- not sure why a standard like bluetooth wouldn't work with all bluetooth devices. The CS rep was basically telling me that I had to use a Sony phone which negates the entire point of an open standard.