|
AVANTE SPEAKEASY TEST
HEAD
LOOK -- NO HANDS!
INTRO
Walk ‘n talk, and do whatever else takes your
fancy with Avante’s SpeakEasy hands-free kit for portable phones
COPY
SpeakEasy is a new hands-free kit for
hand-portable mobile phones from Avante, costing around £116. It’s available to
fit a fairly wide range of popular models, including the NEC P3, Motorola
Micro-TAC (and variants), Panasonic F-series, Oki 900 and Technophones TP2 and
TP3. We elected to try the Technophone version as Nokia have chosen not to
market a hands-free kit of their own in the UK. The Avante outfit comes in two
parts, a small control box -- about the size of a pack of 20 cigarettes -- which plugs into the phone’s accessory
socket via a metre-long curly lead --
and a combined earphone/microphone which slips over the users ear. This
plugs into a socket on the top of the control box,
HANDLING
The control box clips on the user’s belt,
it’s pretty well featureless, apart
from a single push-button and headset socket on the top. Power come from a 9
volt PP3 battery, which, incidentally, is a real swine to install. The earphone
can be worn on either ear, it’s held in place by a shaped loop that fits over the owner’s auricles, (outer ear flap
you filthy-minded swine...) It feels
okay for an hour or so, though any longer and one’s auricles start to get a
mite uncomfortable, and spectacle wearers might find normal head movements
produces an annoying scratching sound as the earphone loop and the arms on
their glasses rub together. The microphone is mounted on the end of a short
boom, it can has two click positions, depending on which side its worn.
Programming the Technophone for hands-free
operation takes only a few moments. Operation is reasonably straightforward;
when the phone rings the call has to be answered in the normal way, by pressing
a button on the phone’s keypad, and then pressing the on/standby button on the
SpeakEasy control box. If you do it the other way around you get an unpleasant
blast of ringing tone in your ear, and it can be very loud. It’s set by the
phone’s volume control, which has to be left at maximum, otherwise it won’t be
heard. Pressing the button on the control box returns the phone to normal
operation.
FEATURES
Received audio quality is good, not significantly
different from the phone’s own built-in speaker in fact. We had expected
trouble from the microphone, due to the very short boom which reaches only
halfway along the user’s cheek. In fact it turned out to be rather good,
striking a fair balance between sensitivity and directionality. Again, it
wasn’t too far removed in sound quality from the Technophone’s on-board
microphone.
It’s probably not the sort of thing you’d
want to wear openly in the street, you feel a tad conspicuous with the phone,
control box and connecting cables dangling off your belt, and the earphone
looks a bit like CIA field agent standard issue. Calling it ‘hands-free’ is
also a bit misleading, you still need a spare hand to answer a call, or dial
out, and both involve at least a couple
of extra actions, compared with using the phone normally. Still, at least you
don’t have to hold the phone when you’re actually speaking and that’s
sufficient rationale. It works well too, speech quality -- transmitted and
received -- is very good, we suspect most callers wouldn’t know that you were
doing something else with your hands, whilst you were talking to them...
VERDICT
The irony is that at £116 its dearer than the
street price of some phones which come with a hands-free earpiece and mike as
standard -- the Oki 1150 for example -- and in that case there’s no additional
control box to mess around with. Nevertheless, SpeakEasy is a good idea, it
works well, and in the case of the Technophone it’s the only option for
hands-free operation but be aware that there are easier, more convenient, and
possibly cheaper ways of achieving the same result.
FACT BOX
AVANTE SpeakEasy £99 plus VAT
Ease of use ****
Features ****
Transmission quality ***
Reception quality ****
Value ***
Features: one-piece earpiece/microphone, belt
clip. Cables: phone to control box -- 1.5-metre curly lead; headset to control
box -- 1.5 metres. Controls: single push-button on/off/operate. Power source:
9-volt PP3 battery. Dimensions: 100 (h) x 25 (d) x 63(d)mm. Weight: 220g (including headphone and battery).
What Cellphone VERDICT 80%
---end---
Ó R. Maybury 1994 2907
NB. IAN -- you mad fool, didn’t you realise that you
sent me a section of Mitchelson’s 38mm pitch, double-bonded bubble wrap with
old style nitrogen-rich pressurisation, it’s incredibly rare. Hardly any
survived after the terrible Scarsdale packaging riots of ‘82, I thought you of
all people would have known that! Oh well, your loss is my gain, I’m open to
offers, but don’t bother me with less than three figures....
|