Jabra SP500

Nick Ross | Oct 13, 2005 9:39 AM

RRP: $0 (time of review)

Handy to have around for when the need arises, but not essential by any means.

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Look ma -- no hands! Looking cool, but does Jabra's BlueTooth hand free phone speaker enhance your life?

Jabra’s SP500 is a BlueTooth speaker which acts as a hand free device. While it won’t offer too much competiton to the Borg-like ear mounts – it’s much bigger than the palm of your hand – it’s debatable whether you’d look quite as much as an idiot with a moderately-large speaker clipped to yourself instead.

In the box is a charger (ours came with a UK adapter), a metal mount with suckers for a car windscreen and a big metal clip to attach to er… pockets and such like. It’s not the epitome of refinement – especially when compared with the like’s of Motorola’s ($25 cheaper) MT77690 BlueTooth equivalent which is comparatively tiny and genuinely portable.

But with size there’s an increase in volume, so if you want to turn a call on your mobile into a conference call, or go hands free in a car it’s good to have the extra volume to play with. However, it may be too heavy for your car’s sun visor if yours is a loose and floppy one. A large-ish boom mic extends from the speaker too which provides better audio quality than the integrated Motorola version but ultimately it’s a little too large for our liking, but will satisfy those who demand a relatively practical (and relatively cheap) speaker phone for the office or car.

This article appeared in the Online issue of PC Authority.