Roadster 2 Wireless In-Car Speakerphone

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.

UPDATE: In week two, I encountered the same issue mentioned by others. The unit totally stopped working. Won't power on, wont do anything. The roadster 2 was mounted on my visor the whole time and not exposed to any extreme temperature and the last time it connected, the battery level is high. I wish I had waited another week to rate it as I'm now going to proceed with a purchase of a new head unit.When working, I loved this unit. It deserved a 5 star but due to lack of reliability, I'd have to now rated as a 1 star. I mean what good is it when it doesn't work, right?-----------------------------------------------This product works as exactly as advertised. I have been using it for about a week and I am quite impress with the capabilities. It connects everytime to multiple types of cell phones and I have had no issues with the connection. Battery life is outstanding due to the auto shut off feature and after a week, it's now at medium so I plugged it in for a couple of hours and that should last me the rest of this week if not into next week. I would assume the duration is going to based upon usage so most of it is subjective. I used it daily for an hour, possibly 1.5 hour.The quality of bluetooth conversation while in the car will change depending upon whether you are using the FM feature. I tested the call clarity with multiple people and using the speaker that came on the Roadster 2, everyone noticed and stated that it sounded like I was on a speaker phone. The call on my end sound fine through the Roadster 2's speakers but you are limited with the Volume. Turning it up too high will distort the sound so you will need to back off from Max settings for optimal sound.With the FM feature enabled, the callers on the other could not tell the difference on whether I was using my phone or the Roadster 2. I don't understand the reasoning but it was proven multiple times with multiple calls. The FM feature allows the bluetooth device to send the output of the sound to your FM Stereo.Music streaming - This was the other reason why I purchased this unit. I do not have an input port on my stereo (2003 BMW Z4). I'll make both a positive comment and a negatime on this feature.Let's start with the negative - If you are expecting to stream your music from your phone to the FM Car Stereo, you will be disappointed in the sound quality. On the other hand, if you have Pandora, and stream the music to the Car Stereo, the sound is significantly improved. Just this feature made it worth while for me to give a 5 star rating as I'm quite impressed with the quality of the sound through bluetooth to my car stereo.Again, if I stream all sound to the FM Stereo, this unit truly deserves the full 5 star rating. The call quality as well as the ability to use my Virtual Assistant to place calls, set remindsers, read both emals and text messages and respond as needed. I also use my virtual assistance to engage navigation and with Samsung Galaxy Note 2, I'm able to perform hands free functions flawlessly.For Android users, I would recoomend the following two Virtual Assistants to use with this bluetooth device:1. Speaktoit Assistance - I use the full version and I'm able to teach her the exact commands to execute via voice - Having bluetooth functionality means, I can perform this task in the car.2. Robin - This assistant is more Navigation based. It can find restaurants, parking, traffic and other features and you can just tell it to take you there.Between the above two applications, the functionality on my Adroid far exceeds that of Siri on IOS devices (I had the iPhone 5 previously).Pros:1. Cost was very reasonable compared to replacing the head unit in my car.2. Sound quality with Bluetooth function works everytime and don't forget to use the FM feature on this device.3. Integrated with my Virtual Assistants, allows me to be truly hands free.Cons:1. Sounds like you are on a speaker phone when using the Roadster 2's built in speaker2. Playing music via bluetooth from your phone is not as clean sounding as using an Stereo input - Pandora streaming via bluetooth is the exception.I have not encountered some of the issues mentioned by others of unit powering off for any duration. This unit has functioned everytime as expected. I'll update the post if I encounter any issues.