I was recently made an offer I couldn’t refuse by those clever people at BlueAnt - the opportunity to evaluate a new Supertooth II hands-free unit.  For those of you who have been living in a box for the last year or so, the Supertooth is a totally self contained, battery powered, hands-free device for bluetooth enabled mobile phones.  Fellow moderators Jackie and Dave had the good fortune to play with and review the Supertooth I last year and, as I now have to drive to/from work, I thought it be would an ideal chance to try the new model out.  My thanks to Mr Gadget and to Taisen of BlueAnt for this opportunity.

So what’s in the box?  The unit comes supplied with both a car and a mains charger, an earpiece, two visor clips and the requisit multilingual user guide.  The two visor clips is a nice touch, acknowledging the fact that many families have more than one car and reinforcing the fact that this device can be so easily moved from one car to another.  The two chargers are also nice to see;  all too often these days mobile devices are supplied with one or the other but not both, except as an accessory - nice to see a company thinking of the customer first rather than their bottom line.

Although I haven’t seen one of the earlier models in the flesh, so to speak, I have seen photographs and can safely say that the new model is a definate improvement as far as looks are concerned.  The new unit is only slightly shorter but has a far less chunky and more elegant look to it.  The new model also boasts an improved battery life quoting a massive 20 hours talk-time and huge 800 hours of standby.  All I can say in support of these power figures is that I have yet to charge the unit from new (over a week ago) and it has had plenty of use - I guess I’ll see the low battery LED illuminate one day!

Bonding the device with a phone is a simple enough procedure which is well documented in the manual for a whole heap of different phones.  To bond with the hands free profile, just turn the unit on and hold both the call accept and reject buttons together for about five seconds - the blue “on” LED blinks blue and red - to use the headset profile, release the buttons then press the call accept button briefly - the LED blinks faster.  The remainder of the bonding process occurs on the phone, once complete the LED simply blinks blue when switched on.  The Supertooth II can be paired with up to two devices at one time, it cannot be paired when charging but it can be used for phone conversations.

To “install” the Supertooth II in a car is a simple case of sliding one of the dual sided clips onto the sun visor then attaching the unit to it via the strong magnets on the back of the unit.  Unlike the original Supertooth which was mounted laterally (side to side) on the visor, the new model is intended to be mounted longitudinally (front to back) for reasons that will soon become apparent.

To switch the unit on, the user simply pulls down the microphone arm - this is hinged at the end nearest the user and has both the microphone and the call accept button on it;  the call reject button is hidden away in the recess behind the arm.  To switch the unit off, just push the arm back into its recess.  This arm provides, in my opinion, a far more robust mounting for the microphone than the previous model and permits the function buttons to be neatly grouped together.

Using the Supertooth II is a delight, even with an Xda II.  When a call comes in, both the phone and the Supertooth ring - just press the call accept button to accept the call (or press the reject button to reject it);  to end the call simply press the call accept button again.  The call accept button is illuminated when ringing for easy location in the dark. 

The really nice part of this device’s design becomes apparent when you need to use the sun visor.  When the visor is down and the Supertooth is on the far side, simply pull the microphone arm round further - it can actually rotate through 210 degrees - which permits the arm to be visible and accessible below the bottom edge of the visor - very slick.  Probably the one possible problem with this design is that the call reject button is on the main body and difficult to access when the visor is down.  I would have placed the reject button on the back of the arm, behind the microphone, to make it easier to reach in this orientation - but I am having to be really picky to find any real fault with this unit.

Needless to say however, since I am using an Xda II, not everything worked perfectly first time, but I can safely say all my problems were as a result of my PPC and not the Supertooth.  I initially had problems bonding until l reset my device a few times.  Also, because I use Pocket Bluetooth Tools to turn off BT on my Xda II after four minutes, I did find the unit slow to respond to a call because of the time taken for the PPC to establish the connection (but my BT headset suffers the same problem);  interestingly, an unusual feature of the device seemed to help me avoid this. 

It appears that the headset profile BT connection of the Supertooth II is more active than that of a real headset - once the connection is established it is maintained somehow, PBT doesn’t shut down BT on the PDA until the Supertooth II is switched off or goes out of range, when it drops immediately.  This unexpected behavior actually ensures that the device responds in a more timely manner - but whether this is by design or not I can’t say.  By ensuring I turned the Supertooth II on after enabling BT on the PPC I found I was able to avoid most connectivity issues.

As regards sound quality, I was pleasantly impressed how clear the sound was, both with the speaker towards me and away from me - road noise in my Saab is low enough not to be an issue, but even in my wife’s Excel I hardly had to increase the volume at all.  Not having had the opportunity to use the device from the caller’s perspective I can only take the word of my friends and colleagues as to how the sound quality is for the remote caller.  The general opinion was very favourable - the sound being described as hollow (to be expected) but clear, the DSP circuitry obviously doing its job of reducing of background noise.

I think the Supertooth II is a thoroughly excellent device.  It has been very well thought out, is highly practical and frankly it looks nice too.  To be honest I can’t see why anyone would bother to buy a BT car kit and go through the pain and cost of having it fitted when this does the job so well.    The additional benefits of being able to move it from car to car and of the earpiece to provide privacy if/when required are just two more nice extra features not necessarily available with a 'plumbed in' car kit.  The only practical improvement I could think of would be some mechanism to allow the mute function of some car audio systems to be controlled.

One final point for consideration: who says the Supertooth II has to be limited to the car?  The Xda II and associated range of PPCs are fortunate enough to have a crude speaker phone function built in, but the majority of mobile phones do not.  With a Supertooth II this is no longer a problem - small enough to fit in a bag or case it can bring the speaker phone into the house, hotel room or even the office.  What is more, the Supertooth II can be used as an audio output device for almost any BT enabled device which supports the Hands-free of Headset profiles, such as a laptop or PC with a BT dongle.  Sure, the sound will be mono and not of hifi quality but in some situations this might still be more convenient than headphones.

I give the Supertooth II a well deserved 9.8/10