Motorola Roadster 2 Wireless In-Car Speakerphone

Motorola Roadster 2 vs. Jabra Freeway, Motorola Wins!
I love this speakerphone! It performs beautifully for my set up. I have a Nokia Lumia Icon from Verizon running Windows Phone. I actually bought a Jabra Freeway after trying out Motorola Roadster 2 on my phone and thought that the Jabra might do better after I read all of the comparison reviews. Well, after trying out the Motorola Roadster 2 for a week, switching to the Jabra model and trying it for another week, I am now returning the Jabra and getting the Motorola again. I’m not sure why all of the comparison reviews ranked the Jabra higher, as the performance of the Roadster 2, at least when paired with my specific phone was far superior.Here are the major factors that are making me go back to the Roadster 2:Launching Phone Commands! This was by far the most annoying part of the Jabra that worked very poorly. On the Jabra I have to press the voice button, then say “phone commands” and then wait for it to launch the phone features so I can actually dial. This wouldn’t be that bad by itself, but I found that when I tried to say “phone commands”, the Jabra unit would fail to recognize that about 90 percent of the time. I hated the two step process, and I hate the fact that it didn’t even work with my phone very well. On the Roadster 2, I just hit the voice button and my phone prompted me immediately for what to say, and it recognized my commands far more accurately than the Jabra. Maybe it’s my phone, maybe it’s Jabra’s embedded software. Who knows? I just know the Roadster 2 worked a lot better when it came to using voice commands.The Jabra is supposed to boast a more powerful speaker and supposed to have better call quality than the Roadster 2. My experience was the exact opposite. When the Roadster 2 was paired to my phone, I could hear calls loud and crisp, navigation prompts came through very clearly too, even cutting through music I was playing on the radio at the same time. That’s how good the speaker is on the Motorola. The Jabra was too quiet, even when I maxed out the volume on both the speaker and the phone settings. I could hear calls and navigation prompts clearly, but it didn’t seem to be loud enough. Sometimes the sound would be fine and loud enough, but it seemed like the Jabra was trying to auto adjust the volume and wasn’t working well. The Motorola had more consistent loudness across the board.The Jabra is quite heavy in comparison, so at least in my car, my sun visor could barely keep the speakerphone up. The Roadster 2 is very compact and lightweight, but packs a much higher punch in loudness and clarity I did not expect from its size. The Roadster 2 does not have the same issue on my sun visor and is held up quite nicely. The grey color matches my interior a little better too and I do not fear my sun visor falling down.Outgoing calls for both the Jabra and Roadster appeared to perform about the same, at least from all of the test calls I made to people. I asked for their feedback and they could not hear much of a difference in how both speakerphones picked up my voice. The other side could hear me clearly and tell what I was saying no matter which speakerphone I was truing, but could definitely tell that I was on a speakerphone.The Jabra’s button layout is a but annoying, once mounted, the volume up and down buttons aren’t obvious, on the Roadster 2, I can more easily see the buttons when mounted. Also, all of the buttons on the Roadster 2 are backlit, but the Jabra is not. This is a huge bonus when you are trying to use the speakerphone at night and you want to more quickly figure out where the buttons are.The FM tuning feature on both seem to work about the same, which is to say, not greatest. I’m in the Chicago area and it’s hard to find blank frequencies that work consistently. I found myself not using this feature much on both.The Roadster 2 currently is available for only 60 percent of the price of the Jabra Freeway on Amazon. So it wins out on current pricing as of 11-2-2014, but at MSRP, they are roughly equal.If you buy this or the Jabra Freeway, I have no doubt you will be happy with the speakerphone performance itself on both models, but at least for my case, the Roadster 2 wins out. I would definitely give both a try and see which one works better for your set up. I found myself fumbling with the Jabra model more often while driving, and it was definitely more distracting than helpful. The Roadster 2 did not require nearly as much effort to operate and I found it behaved more like an actual “in-car” system.My sister and brother and law both have the Jabra, and they have been very happy with the performance. Maybe they don’t have the same “two step” process to launch phone commands, or they may not use that feature.Both the Roadster 2 and Jabra work very well, but I think the Roadster 2 is currently the better value, given the available pricing.FOLLOW UP POST TO COMMENT: I drive a sports car with a tuned exhaust and I get tons of road noise in the cabin of my car, but when maxed out on volume on the device and at about 80% volume set on my phone, I can hear the speaker OK. I’m still using this 2+ years later and it’s still performing mostly flawlessly. Some issues I discovered is that sometimes the speaker will unpair itself and I have to turn the power off and back on. No big deal since at least the switch is easily accessed on the side. Also, I bought a super long microUSB cable and have it routed from my sun visor to a USB charger in my cigarette lighter instead of using the charger it comes with. It’s a super clean setup and I can easily unplug the USB cable when I want to save the built in battery and not have it constantly charging. When on battery, the speakerphone still lasts several hours with straight talking, or days if I am not using it heavily. It’s nice since it announces when the battery is low and I can just slip the USB cable back into the charger. Since the review, I’ve also updated my phone to run Windows 10 and everything still works great with Cortana and/or voice commands. The voice button calls up Cortana immediately and I can utilize all of her functions with just pushing a button on the speakerphone. Since I got the speakerphone, it feels like the response time has slowed down a little with voice commands, but this might have more to do with the age of my phone at this point.

Muy bueno!Se arranca y conecta al teléfono inmediatamente. Muy útil y cómodo. Vino en perfecto estado. Muy recomendable para conductores.

Ottimo altoparlante, audio potente e chiaro.Peccato non sia impostabile la lingua italiana ma essendo un prodotto venduto prevalentemente negli USA è comprensibile questa mancanza.Unico difetto è un pò lento finchè arriva al momento in cui puoi usare la voce per dire “rispondi” o “ignora” la chiamata e intanto gli squilli vanno…in quel caso bisogna premere il tasto fisico con la cornetta e si risponde tranquillamente.Prodotto comunque ottimo e consigliato.

Lástima que compré este aparato. Si hubiera sabido que no funcionara con Apple Iphone, no lo hubiera comprado. No cuidé de tomar en cuenta que ya pasó un mes. Una pérdida.