BlueAnt S4 hands-free voice controlled car speakerphone

Summary: I'm on conference calls 3 to 4 hours a day and I've tried/continue to try every quality bluetooth&wired headsets&speaker phone product I can find to improve my work life.

In my opinion, the S4 has one of the best in coming and out going voice quality of all the bluetooth speaker phones out on the market currently. I have been using both the Moto T315 and Blueant's own Supertooth 3 for over a year now and in my daily usage, S4 trumps both of them in voice quality. In city driving, with windows up, I could hold a conference without raising my usually VERY soft spoken voice and the people I was conversing with reported that they thought I was speaking directly with my phone (iPhone 3GS, Blackberry Curve 8300). Granted my Volvo shields traffic and road noise fairly well (but not as quiet as a higher end Lexus). With all other speaker phone devices, I had to raise my voice on every call just to get myself heard (this includes Blueant's own Supertooth 3 and the latest Moto T series). I'm very impressed with how sensitive the S4's mic is and yet it is fairly good at canceling unwanted noise.

One useful tip I've found over the years is to reduce echo you hear from a speaker phone is to reduce speaker volume. Often the echo happens when you turn up the speaker volume and the speaker phone's mic is picking up sound from its own speaker.

Depending on how you place the device, I found that if the S4 mic is pointed directly above my head, it was harder to hear me and I had to tilt my head up a bit for the S4 to pick up my voice properly. I found that for my setup, clipping the mounting clip on the far side of my car visor (the side that's closet to the windshield), then turning the S4 around (thanks to S4 magnet design, you can turn the S4 180degrees and it will still attach on the visor clip just as tightly: brilliant) helps to move the S4 further out in front of me so its mic is situated in front of my face. In this position, the S4 picked up my voice better. This is a brilliant design by Blueant, with all other speakerphone devices, the mounting clips are fixed onto the device so you can't be creative in mounting the device.

After trying out different devices from Moto, Jabra, and Blackberry, the Blueants have the best mounting system because the magnet is ON the device. This allows for maximum flexibility for mounting on the visor as well as provides for ease of removing the device when I'm leaving the car. Sometimes I just want to hide the device after I park. As well, when I take it with me after I get home and with the magnet, I just stick it under any metallic device around my desk and I use it to conference at home!

Sometimes the voice activator will not pick up my voice so I couldn't activate calling with just my voice. This may be alleviated by mounting the S4 on different sides of the visor.

The touch sensitive controls are NOT sensitive. I often had to touch the multi-function&volume controls a few times to get it to register my touch. And then it becomes a driving hazard because I had to keep taking my eyes off the road to look at it. With other speaker phone devices I had, they had large physical buttons. I didn't have to take my eyes off the road to locate them once I practice pushing the buttons a few times. For a device that emphasizes on TRUE handsfree, this is a huge design oversight.

The firmware update software is windows 32 bit only and buggy. Like other users have reported, it would often fail during updates. So I had to attempt it a few times to get it properly updated.

Favorites is useless as it uses up air time.

A2DP is also useless as music coming out of the mono speaker. It would have been more useful to give us an FM transmitter instead.
I miss the auto reconnection of the Blueant Supertooth3. I found it so helpful that it would automatically reconnect whenever I open my car door. Many times I was already in a conversation on a bluetooth ear piece as I approach the car and as soon as I opened the door, the conversation would just switch over to my supertooth3 automatically! It really freed my hands up to do things like starting the vehicle, adjusting seat belts, all without pausing my conversation nor having to manually switching to the speakerphone. With the S4 I kept forgetting to push the multi function button whenever I got back into my car.

Overall I'm happy I wish the next version would bring back to auto reconnect with the vibration sensor as well as Blueant's awesome dual microphone noise canceling technology (as found on the V1 and Q1), which I found, in my use, to be superior to all the Jawbones (except for the original, yes I've owned them all) and most of the Plantronics (except for the Voyager Pro, currently the only noise canceling headset I would go to if I know I'm going to be on a very important business call).

Lastly, just go to a store with a good return policy and try it out for yourself to see if the product fits your needs.

Updated on Sep 27, 2010

Update: after 2 months of using this on a daily basis, I think those of you who are considering this should know. That the A2DP feature keeps taking over as the primary audio output device after the S4 connects to the phone. So if you already use the headphone output on your phone to your car's stereo, and do not want to hear your music through the poor quality S4 speaker, you'll need to switch the output to headphones via your phone's menu system. And then when you'd like to make/take a call using the S4, you'll have to switch the audio output option on your phone back to the S4. I found myself making this switch back and forth very often, which defeats the purpose of using the S4 as a driving safety product. Currently there is no way of turning off A2DP. I guess Blueant is quite confident that we'll all be using their mono speaker as our primary music enjoyment device. Watch out for this! IMHO, it makes this device unsafe for music listeners (using the same phone).

Updated on Sep 27, 2010

CNET won't let me change my rating for some reason (could be my customized FF browser), but I'm lowering my rating due to the A2DP causing potential issues for drivers' safety to a two star. I'll update the rating again if Blueant provides a way for this to be turned off like Jawbone does on their new ICON headset.