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Iqua Vizor Sun Bluetooth Car Speakerphone

29.04.2009
With a solar-powered such as the Iqua Vizor Sun, under optimal conditions you can expect to talk for hours and hours, without ever having to recharge using a cable. But "optimal conditions" means that, on a daily basis, you park your car in direct sunlight, not tucked away in an underground lot.

In my tests, apart from the US$100 (as of 3/27/09) Vizor Sun's first charge out of the box, I never had to use the charging cable (or bundled in-car charger) again. The same goes for the .

The company lets you choose between two installation options: You either use the sticky-backed plate to attach the speakerphone to the dashboard or attach the metal clip to the magnets on the underside of the device before sliding it onto a sun visor. I chose the latter, as my car's visor is within easy reach for me (I have short arms). If the Vizor Sun were on the dash, I would have to lean too far to work the controls--I'd rather concentrate on driving.

The front end of the unit consists of a clever and unique flap-like strip, which accommodates all the controls; you'll find dedicated buttons for volume-up and -down, starting a call, ending a call, and voice dialing. All five buttons are in a row, so getting a feel for them without taking my eyes off the road took me a little while. The control strip swivels, so I adjusted it to suit the curve of my visor. On the other side of the strip, facing the windshield, is the flat part of the unit, which houses the solar panel.

Call quality was just about average. According to the parties at the other end, my voice often sounded far away and muffled, with varying levels of interference in the background. My words broke up sometimes, and my chitchat came across as shaky or quivering. When the calls sounded like that, the quality was unusable for lengthy business conversations. Occasionally calls sounded clean with no distortion, and one caller thought that my voice sounded more natural--that is, less robotic--compared with how it came across on other speakerphones. On my end, callers' voices came through clearly.

The voice-dialing feature worked well; I didn't need to yell out names. I liked how the Vizor Sun had its own indicator for incoming calls--a melodic beep--so if my phone happened to be on vibrate, I would still be alerted to an incoming call. (Otherwise, my phone's ring and the beep would chime together.)