Hassles of Communicator Testing

Uclear headset

Judy and I have been in the market for awhile now for a new helmet-to-helmet communicator, ever since our last one just stopped working for unknown reasons. I can’t say we were ever thrilled with how it worked, but at least we could talk as we rode. And just FYI, that was a Collett Electronics model.

One thing stopping us from buying a new communicator was that we hated the idea of spending a bunch of money on something sight-unseen. We had learned something of the pros and cons of communicators from using our Collett and now we were more selective.

You can well imagine then that I was particularly pleased to be contacted last week by a rep from a company producing communicators asking me if I would like to do a demo of their latest device and write about it. Don’t throw me in that briar patch, right?

The company is UCLEAR, and the product is the HCB100. The company claims this is all military-grade technology, which is to say, very good. I particularly like the fact that the voice pick-up is not a boom, or some microphone that sticks out in front of your mouth. The device apparently just clips to the side of your helmet and is good enough to pick up your voice as you speak.

Now, I say apparently because I don’t have the device yet. This thing has the ability to connect to your bluetooth-enabled cellphone, to your GPS unit, and I’m not sure what else. I told the rep that neither my wife nor I have a bluetooth-enabled cellphone and he didn’t seem to feel it would be worth their while to have me do the test if I wasn’t going to be able to test its full capabilities.

No problem, I figured, I’d ask around and see which of my riding friends have bluetooth-enabled cell phones. Well, it turns out that apparently none of them do. Fortunately, while Alan does not have one himself, he knows someone who does, and he sent me an email with contact info for his friend. I sent an email but haven’t heard back yet, but I presume this will work out.

So anyway, maybe soon I’ll have that nailed down and UCLEAR will be sending me one of their units. And of course I’ll be right back here telling you all about it. And heck, I don’t even care about the bluetooth capabilities. As long as it works well as a communicator for Judy and me, I’m thinking we’re going to be buying this thing rather than be sending it back after the test.

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One Response to “Hassles of Communicator Testing”

  1. » Blog Archive » Wussing Out on the Wind, Testing Communicators Says:

    […] As I mentioned before, these communicators do a lot more than let the rider and passenger talk. They also connect with your cell phone, your GPS, or your iPod. I’ll be testing all those things later, but on Sunday we were just trying out the rider to passenger communication. And really, we need to do a lot more testing than we did. We didn’t stay out too long because it was cold and our fingers were really feeling it after not too long. […]

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