Jump to content

Bluetooth For Helmets


grayhawkglen

Recommended Posts

Can anyone recommend a good Bluetooth headset? I would imagine many members of our forum have experience with them. I am VERY happy with my Bell Star helmet, so I am looking for a unit to add, not a Bluetooth helmet.
Thanks!
2015 Yamaha FJ-09
Sold: KTM Super Duke 990, Ducati 1098S, BMW K1200S, HD Fat Boy, HD Road King Classic, Kawasaki KLR 650
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 34
  • Created
  • Last Reply
  • Premium Member
Do you want comms with another headset or just to phone/GPS?
 
Cardo do a Scala Rider Qz that is for those like me that do not wish to interact with other people when riding. I can hear satnav instructions or listen to music or the radio on my phone. If I wanted to I could make/receive phone calls, although the mic is not the best when I recorded voicemail and played it back. I don't need this function as anyone that wants to contact me will send a text message. It's a shame the mic does not unplug as I would ditch it.
 
I had no difficulty pairing the device to my HTC Android phone or Garmin Zumo GPS. The Qz was significantly cheaper than a their standard unit that has an intercom function.
 
Speaker position is crucial and I prefer to use with in ear buds.
 
http://cardosystems.com/portfolio-item/scala-rider-qz/
http://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/cardo-scala-rider-qz-headset has a video
I bought mine from Amazon UK for around £75
 
 
This signature is left blank as the poster writes enough pretentious bollocks as it is.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for responding. Good questions...no, I do not want to speak with other riders, music and GPS would be my only requirement. I will have a look at this unit!
2015 Yamaha FJ-09
Sold: KTM Super Duke 990, Ducati 1098S, BMW K1200S, HD Fat Boy, HD Road King Classic, Kawasaki KLR 650
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
Can anyone recommend a good Bluetooth headset? I would imagine many members of our forum have experience with them. I am VERY happy with my Bell Star helmet, so I am looking for a unit to add, not a Bluetooth helmet. Thanks!
With the caveat that I don't have any experience with competitors, I'm quite happy with the Sena products.  I'm currently using the 20S, but I used the SMH10 for a couple of years and that worked well too. 
Much of my riding group also uses them, and Sena recently had a firmware update that makes their units intercompatible with those of other vendors.  (I don't know if other vendors did the same, maybe it's a standard?)
 
I primarily use it for music and GPS while riding since I do most riding solo, but it's been useful with friends and it's great when riding with my daughter on the back.
 
Sena has a large number of models at this point, but I think the three to look at are the SMH5, SMH10, and 20S.  The first is their "cheap" model and AFAICT the big difference between that and the SMH10 is that it only has half the battery life -- 7 hours claimed continuous life.  The SMH10 and 20S are both rated at 14.
 
I've never used the SMH5, but the 10 and 20 really do get 14 hours out of a charge.  I've done back-to-back full riding days without a recharge (I forgot :-) and not run out of juice.  I regularly go a week or more commuting without recharging it.  If it does go dead you can use a micro USB charger in the FJ's accessory socket to charge it while riding and using it.
 
While the performance of most of the models is essentially identical -- same number of intercom channels, for instance -- the 20S does have a couple of nice features.  The one I wanted was the ability to have more audio feeds.  The 5 and 10 can have one phone and one stereo profile (I forget their bluetooth names).  This was a big problem for me because the iPhone grabbed both profiles with no way to tell it not to (I bet it's easy with Android :-/ ), and the Garmin Zumo couldn't get any.  I worked around that at first with an SM10 -- that's a multiplexer that I could plug both phone and GPS into -- but the way I set up my wiring it was balky to hook it all up and get it up and running every time I got on the bike.  I hated it.
 
I don't know how many simultaneous audio profiles the 20 has, but it's enough to run both the iPhone and GPS so I don't need anything else.  It works neat and clean as you please, just jump on the bike and turn on the headset and it links to the phone and I have music.  If I am touring and set up the GPS, as soon as I light up the GPS it connects and that's good too.
 
The other feature the 20 provides that I didn't think I cared about is SPEED.  The 10 takes awhile to get through the initial pairing or to pair up with other communicators for intercom.  It's not horrible -- except perhaps that getting the intercoms paired takes long enough that it's hard to know if it's working at all -- but it takes a handful of seconds to get the phone connected after it's turned on and there is often sound breakup while the 10 finishes up whatever tasks it's doing during boot.  Within a minute or two it's completely happy.  The 20, in contrast, boots up almost instantly and connects to phone and GPS within a couple of seconds.  I don't know how its pairing performance is since I am the only person in my group who has a 20; it's still a bit of a lag against 10s.
 
There are some other niceties that don't matter much to me: Voice control ("Hello sena ... play music"), group intercom (this is, I think, a designation of sets of pairings in groups so it's easy to switch back and forth -- even the 10 supports 4-way simultaneous intercom, and more if you chain them), and phone app installation for status and configuration.
 
Anyway, the Sena units are well built and I've been quite happy with mine.
2015 FJ-09 (Mary Kate)
2007 Daytona 675 (Tabitha, ret.)
1998 Vulcan 800 (Ret.)
2001 SV650S (Veronica, Ret.)
2000 Intruder 800 (Ret.)
 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
Sena seems kind of like the gold standard these days - 20S is the high end ~$300 discounted to ~$270 - the 10S is last years model, about $239, discounted to $215. There are cheaper options made by other companies, but I don't know much about them.
 
The 10S is very capable and mostly limits the things like listening to music, taking a phone call, and listening to GPS directions ALL AT THE SAME TIME (not a good idea anyway in my mind)
 
The one feature that stood out to me for the 20S was the ability to communicate with riders who don't use Sena devices, plus extended range.
 
Both are good units, you really can't go wrong.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

SENA 20s Dual here. Only one I have ever owned. Have worked wonderfully so far. That said, I have nothing to compare it to as it's the only system I have used. I went with the Dual so when one battery gives out 11 or 12 hours into the day I can just pop the other unit on and keep going like nothing has happened. I can get an entire days riding in without needing to recharge along the way. I put the same system in my son's helmet. Intercom works great, we can share music. No complaints so far.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • Premium Member
My friends and I all use the Sena 20S and while I am happy with it, pairing can be a real pain and sometimes at least one set seems stuck in ambient mode, so we hear their bikes racket. I just click in an out of the intercom mode as needed.
The distance claims are BS though. You get about 250 yards of straight line range and it doesn't seem to work around corners.
2015 FJ-09
2006 Triumph Daytona 675
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Paired my Sena SMH5 with a buddy's interphone F3 today. Sena has a feeature called 'universal pairing' which means the sena appears as a 'phone' to older intercoms. Also the Sena 5 does do GPS and music at the same time - it fades the music while the GPS instructions are delivered.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×