The NoiseHush N650 is a small solar-powered car kit. It charges the 100mAh battery from the light of the sun and, in theory, you can have “unlimited talk time” in direct sun light. When there’s no sun you do get a charger in the shape of a cigarette lighter plug and a miniUSB cable to connect up.
Before we start there’s our usual video. Here we go all the way from unboxing to the final install, so watch this ….
Out of the box there’s an instruction manual, windscreen mount, some suckers (for connecting that mount to the windscreen), a connecting cable and cigarette charger. There’s no mains charger here but you should be able to plug that connecting cable into your PC or wall charger without any issues. This means that you can use the system in the office or at home as a hands-free system and, if you get to your destination and you’re still mid-conversation, you can take it with
you.
The NoiseHush N650 has a solar panel taking up most of the rear. In our tests I found that a one-hour journey on a dark, cloudy day with one 10-minute phone call seemed to be the limit. If you’re going to take a long journey on a dark day, keep the supplied charging cable and socket in the car.
On the left you’ll find the power button. Press it for about 2 seconds and it’ll turn on or off. Press it for longer and you’ll hop into the pairing mode that we showed you on the video.
On the right is the charging socket and the “A/T” button which, when you press and hold, transfers all your contacts to the NoiseHush. It takes a little while to do this, and obviously it depends how many contacts you have. If you tap the A/T button you can then use the volume up / down buttons on the front to scroll through your contacts
and dial.
The main call / drop key will do just that, although on our test phone I couldn’t get the voice-dial system to work (pressing the call button should activate it on your phone). I found that I had to dial from my phone, but that’s no real issue.
The LCD display, which flips down, tells you what’s happening – there’s a battery meter, Bluetooth notification (whether it can “see” your phone) and the name of the handset it’s connected to. This display will also show you the number of the person you’re calling and, when someone calls you, it’ll show the number and sound a nice “ring ring” noise to
alert you. You can then whack the call button to answer, or double-tap to drop the call.
The LCD display is backlit in bright blue but this will only illuminate when something is happening, which is good.
Pairing the NoiseHush N650 with the phones we tested was painless and easy – no passcode to remember or enter and it just hooked in. Every device we tried spotted the car-kit quickly and all the contacts transferred across.
To be honest I’d not heard of NoiseHush and, despite the claims on the box, I wanted to try the audio quality for myself. To be honest it was spot on. The audio output was loud, the other person could hear me perfectly and there wasn’t any of those awkward moments where you’re talking over each other. It was a natural phone call experience and you
have the need to leave gaps where you “think” the other person is calling.
The cradle is just right. The NoiseHush itself is held into the cradle by magnets and there’s just the right amount of “hold” to keep it in place. It didn’t fall out at any point, even over the most vicious speed-bumps! I good tug will remove the NoiseHush from the suction-cup-cradle and you can take the device into your office and use it there too.
Conclusion
I’m a little spoiled and already have a factory-installed Bluetooth car kit. Having to get in the car and turn it on each time was a bit of a change for me. The NoiseHush will actually power itself down when it loses the Bluetooth connection with your phone. That’s a good thing battery-wise, but it does also mean that you’ll need to press and hold the “On” button to get things going when you hop back into the car. It’s only a small thing, but you need to remember to do it. Once the NoiseHush is on it’ll detect your phone quickly.
It was kinda nice to look up at the NoiseHush and see the battery charging from the sun. The battery meter shows the battery being charged as you drive around and, even though I’m writing this in the middle of winter with short days, it gave a good hour of use on a pretty dark day.
The build-quality was great and my wife has pretty much binned her existing Bluetooth headset for this NoiseHush hands-free unit as …
a) You didn’t need to remember to take it into the car with you
b) You didn’t have to charge the thing every night
c) It didn’t stick out of your ear.
Overall, I’m pretty impressed by this little gadget. The sound quality was excellent and, provided you’re aware that the battery can need a bit of “help” when it’s not so sunny and the day-light isn’t available then this is a recommended buy from us.
Link – WirelessGround.com