Our good friends at WirelessGround.com have sent us another cool Solar product, this time from a company called NoiseHush. The N650 is Solar Bluetooth Car Kit and is available from WirelessGround for $59.95 at the time of writing this article.

Most phones you purchase now have built in speaker phone functionality, but if you’ve tried to use it in your car, you’ll know that it’s very hard to hear the people talking to you, and pretty often, hard for those people to hear you.  Some smart phones offer docking stations for your vehicles but many of them don’t have a speaker built in so you’re still relying on the speaker built in to the phone.  There are exceptions to this like the dock you can purchase for the Google Nexus One, but even the built in speakers for those docks sometimes could do with a small volume boost.

I’ve never tried a Bluetooth speaker phone like the NoiseHush N650 before so this is going to be a interesting and fun review. I’ve also never never hear of NoiseHush before, but they specialize in wireless sound based products like headsets and speaker phones so you’d hope they do it well.  Read on to see how the NoiseHush N650 worked out for us.

Who is NoiseHush?

NoiseHush is a global provider of innovative Bluetooth Headsets, Mono Headsets, Car Kits, Stereo Headsets, Stereo Bluetooth, Cell phone Headsets, and other wireless hands free solutions. As one of the world leaders, the company is passionate about design, quality, technology, and improving lives through revolutionary products. All of our products are known to be easy to use, highly configurable, and extremely reliable. All hardware design, software design, and product manufacturing is done in-house giving us an unparalleled level of flexibility and control. Over the years, NoiseHush has established strategic relationships with major engineering firms allowing us to deliver a wide range of cutting-edge, cost-effective products. NoiseHush products sell through an elaborate network of authorized distributors, resellers, VARs, retailers and e-tailers.

About NoiseHush:NoiseHush is a global provider of innovative Bluetooth Headsets, Mono Headsets, Car Kits, Stereo Headsets, Stereo Bluetooth, Cell phone Headsets, and other wireless hands free solutions. As one of the world leaders, the company is passionate about design, quality, technology, and improving lives through revolutionary products. All of our products are known to be easy to use, highly configurable, and extremely reliable. All hardware design, software design, and product manufacturing is done in-house giving us an unparalleled level of flexibility and control. Over the years, NoiseHush has established strategic relationships with major engineering firms allowing us to deliver a wide range of cutting-edge, cost-effective products. NoiseHush products sell through an elaborate network of authorized distributors, resellers, VARs, retailers and e-tailers.

The NoiseHush N650 is a fully featured Bluetooth car speaker phone that keeps itself charged using the power of the sun.  If you don’t have any sun where you live, you can always plug in the supplied USB charger for supplemental power.

Here’s a quick rundown of the specifications:

• • Talk Time: Up to 10 Hours
• • Standby Time: Up to 160 Hours
• • Charging Time: About 2 Hours
• • Bluetooth Version: v2.1
• • Bluetooth Profile: HSP & HFP
• • Solar Panel: 5.5V === 50mA
• • Working Temperature: -10~60C
• • Storage Temperature: -20~70C
• • Dimensions (mm): 106 (L) x 54 (W) x 15 (T)
• • Weight: Main Body-65g Windshield-14g
• • Operating Distance: Up to 30 feet (10 meters)
• • Battery: 100 mAh Li-polymer

Overview:

The N650 comes with it’s own windshield mounting kit with suction cups to mount the unit.  This is a well thought out design that allows the solar panel  side of the unit  to be constantly pointing out of the window and keep it’s built-in rechargeable Li-polymer battery topped up and ready for use.  There is an indicator on the display that blinks to indicate the unit is charging and turns solid once the unit has fully charged itself.

Setting up is incredibly simple and holding down the power button for a few extra seconds when your powering on initiates the pairing mode.  Turn on Bluetooth on your phone and connect to the N650 and your done.

Once your device are connected, you can also copy across your contact list from your phone to the N650 so you can use the device directly to access your contacts and initiate phone calls.  the downside to this is that if you have a very large contact list on your phone, it can take a long time to transfer.  Not that you will do this very often, but each time you update your contacts on your phone you’ll probably want to do the transfer once more.

You can scroll through your contact list on the display of the N650, but this is a very tedious affair when your trying to find that one person to call.  I would stay with using your phone to initiate the call.

One nice addition would have been the ability to play other media from your phone through this device as it currently only supports voice.

Build Quality:

The NoiseHush N650 appears like a pretty well built device.  It’s plastic like most similar devices, but the hinge system on the top display feels smooth and everything fits together nicely.  The accessory port charging adapter on the other hand, feels very cheap, but it does what it’s supposed to do and that’s charging the device if you need the extra top up.

Build Quality [rating:4] 4/5

Call Quality:

The N650 call quality is incredibly good and the volume level in your vehicle is amazing to the point that I actually had to turn it down so i wasn’t cringing.  Everyone I had conversations with came through loud and clear, which is a big plus for a device like this.  Compared to the volume level of the dock speaker on my Nexus One, there is no competition.

I have received mixed comments from the people on the other end of the conversation.  Some people stated that I was very clear and didn’t realize I was using a hands free speaker phone device, while other stated that I sounded very quiet and distant.  I haven’t quiet worked out why yet.   Overall I’ve been very happy with the cal quality of the device.

Call Quality [rating:4] 4/5

Battery Performance:

Battery performance on the N650 is a hard thing to quantify as it’s constantly charging when it mounted on the wind shield of my vehicle.  I see the charging indicator very frequently so  I know that the solar charging panels on the rear of the device are picking up what they need and charging the internal battery. I’ve used the device quiet a lot of the last couple of weeks and not any issues with battery low warnings.  As winter draws in and less sunlight is available, I’ll see how it works and if I’ll need to use the accessory port charger to top it up.

Battery [rating:5] 5/5

Conclusion

Overall this device works as advertised and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good hands free solution for their vehicle.  It’s a shame that it will only do the voice from your phone as it would be nice to have the voice announcements and navigation directions from your phone on a louder speaker than the internal once of your phone.

Overall [rating:4] 4/5

Don’t forget to check out the other deals from WirelessGround as they do have so pretty good pricing going on.