Parrot Rhythm N'Blue car radio any good?

Barak

Barak

Barak

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Joined
15 May 2004
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42
Getting a new car this week (V6 Alfa 156) and have been looking around for a decent CD player to put in it. This Parrot bluetooth stereo looks pretty damn nifty but it's also quite new, so I can't find any reviews on it.

Has anyone seen/tried one or know of somewhere with a proper review of one?
Cheers
 
Rubbish mate. Loads of problems with the bluetooth compatability
 
I've got a parot CK3100 hands free kit and i Have to say that it is absolutely superb. Although that said I don't think I would buy a stereo from them as its the first one theyve made and I doubt the sound quality would be as good as some of the major stereo makers who also offer the bluetooth compatability with stereos.
 
What kinds of compatibility problems Gav? They seem to have good documentation on support for various phones (including my O2 XDA mini), so do you mean the claimed compatibility is crap, or just the range of compatibility?
 
There are some issues with some sony ericsson phones as well as a problem with the 6230i's The problem stems from the fact that some manufacturers dont stick to the bluetooth specifications and go off and add their own little commands. I fit a lot of Parrot stuff and it is ok but just because your phone might be Bluetooth doesn't automatically mean that it will definately work. It's not really Parrots fault.
 
Think it may be worth a try for how much cheaper it is than the comparable offering from Pioneer (which doesn't seem to support any of the XDAs anyway).

Who else does bluetooth units? I think H&B do one, will have to have a search.

Thanks again for the help btw.
 
Though I might as well follow up on this.

I ended up buying the Pioneer DEH-P70BT (it does support the O2 XDA II mini, named as the QTek S100 - same thing). The Pioneer is great so far and works really well with the phone, bar a couple of small niggles that I haven't had time to sort out yet:
  • Transferring contacts to the unit is very hit and miss. The phone seems to send the contacts out much faster than the HU can receive them and so you rarely get more than ~ 50% of the contacts actually transferred across. Haven't got round to looking for a fix for this yet, but I'd imagine it is fixable.
  • Putting my phone in a cradle that's stuck to the windscreen, there isn't a line of sight to the HU and so the connection quality for hands free isn't so good - people have commented it's very quiet on their end. When the phone's on the seat or in my pocket, reception seems great.
  • The screen on the unit inverts its colour every few minutes (from black background, blue text/anim to blue background, black text/anim). When inverted, the display is quite bright and can be a distraction. Haven't found a way to stop it doing this yet.
Other than the above, it's great :)
 
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