After a few days with the MOTOROKR T505

I have to say I love it … for $80. I wouldn’t love it for $120 but I’d still like it a lot.

OK, details. My Motorola MOTOROKR T505 arrived this past Wednesday. $80, about, at this Newegg page.

I guess I should start with a short description. It’s a Bluetooth speakphone with a built-in speaker. But the cool thing is it’s got an FM transmitter, too, so it can send audio to the radio in your car. Why is that cool, you ask? Because it also does A2DP which means you can stream audio (read: music) to it and it’ll forward that to your radio. And that’s the main reason I was after something like it. I looked at other items like it, too. The Parrot PMK5800 is nice and powered (you plug it into your cigaratte lighter or whatever they call the power outlet in your car nowadays). There’s got to be a problem with that, though, because that puts the microphone waaayyyyy below eye-level and, in my case, below the air conditioning outlets which would probably mean voice pickup wouldn’t be as good. I also think that modern cars have their FM antenna in the window or the roof and that means reception’s more difficult, too. The Venturi Mini has more features, including the ability to broadcast callerid to the radio using RDS, but, again, it plugs into a power outlet which puts it below my air conditioning vents.

So, I went with the Motorola unit. Call quality is excellent! I’ve got a Jabra BT8010 headset which also does A2DP and friends have told me that the Motorola speakerphone is clearer and rejects spurious sounds much better. Of course when I have calls piped through the stereo, I have no trouble hearing them, either.

The real question is how’s the music? The volume’s a little low and it’s a little heavy on the bass for me but the separation is good and the fidelity is great. And I like the sound better than my BT8010. YMMV — your ears may be better than mine, your car may be quieter or, well, who knows. But I like it. And I’m keeping it.

If you want more technical detail, download the Quick Start Guide from here. I’ve tried all the features except factory reset and they all work as advertised. But email or tweet me if you want more details.

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