If you care about yourself and your car guests, you need a handsfree kit to use your mobile phone while driving. If you will, the Motorola T325 Bluetoth In-Car Speakerphone will serve you faithfully for a long time.

The  Motorola T325 and its charger

The review was made on a loaner that didn’t include retail packaging, and came with the T325 unit and an AC power adapter.

Specifications

The specs reported by Motorola show some of the key features of the device:

Entry On/Exit Off
Automatically turns on when you get into your car and off when you get out.

Who’s Calling
Audibly announces the names of incoming callers from your phonebook-compatible with up to 1500 names.

Favorite Contact List
Intuitively updates and stores your 10-25 most frequently used phone numbers, allowing you to instantly speed dial the people you call most at the touch of a button.

Key features:

• Dedicated power switch slides to the left and right to turn the device on and off
• Wire clip to easily secure to your cars visor; no installation required
• Large call button enables you to place calls easily
• Tri-colored LED for identifying Bluetooth connectivity and mute status
• Centrally located microphone for optimal audio pick-up
• Mute/Phonebook Button helps you silence any conversation and connect with your Favorite Contacts
• Volume buttons with night friendly identification allow you to control the volume of the conversation
• Micro USB

Tech specs:

• Dimensions: 3.26″ X 3.26″ (with tapering thickness of 0.94″ to 0.55″)
• Talk Time: Up to 17 hrs
• Standby Time: Up to 2.5 weeks
• Range: Up to 33 ft

Overview

The T325 is composed of black and gray plastic; the speaker and the black call button are on the front side. Being so big and shiny  you will never miss the call button again!

The power switch button, status light, microphone and mute/favorite contacts button are placed on the top. The volume buttons and charger port are on the right, while a metal wire clip is used to place the speakerphone on the sun visor in the car.

Attaching the speakerphone with the clip was a breeze, with no effects on the sun visor after removing it after the loan period.

Front view: notice the big answer call button

Rear view with the metal wire clip to attach the T325 to the sun visor

Right side view with the charging port (left) and volume buttons (right)

Top view, showing the power switch button (left), status light and microphone (center) and mute/favorite contacts button (right)

The charger

Size comparison with a DVD case (front view)

Size comparison with a DVD case (side view)

In car front view

In car angled view

Voice prompts

As soon as you switch on the device you are welcomed by voice prompts that will let your interaction with the T325 as smooth as possible. As the Motorola H17 Flip BT Headset, the T325 supports voice prompts: the device will give you feedback of its activity and status with a nice voice, in order to help you enjoy the speakerphone.

Voice prompts prove very useful as they alert you about the battery charge and the connection status:

• “Downloading caller ID information”
• “Battery level is high/medium/low”
• “Battery level is very low. Please recharge now”
• “Connected to <phone name>”
• “Connection to <phone name> has been dropped”

where <phone name> is the Bluetooth name you selected to give to your phone.

Automatic On/Off

The T325 has automatic on/off. This feature automatically disconnects the speakerphone and turns it off when your phone is distant for more than 20 seconds. When you return and open the car door, the speakerphone turns on and tries to reconnect (and moving the speakerphone does the trick too). To activate this feature is enough to turn on the speakerphone. Thus, the speakerphone will be on only when needed, thus saving battery.

Thanks to the voice prompts, each time you enter your car the device will prompt you with a voice message on battery status:

• “Battery level is high/medium/low”
• “Battery level is very low. Please recharge now”

so that you will never find yourself without a charged T325.

PBAP and favorite contacts

The speakerphone supports the Phone Book Access Profile (aka PBAP) which allows to download on itself the contacts stored on the phone. When you first pair the T325 to your phone, you will asked to download the contacts stored therein in the speakerphone.

The T325 will then announce the name of known incoming callers or the phone number of unknown ones.

To select a favorite to call, you will have to:

• press the “Mute/Favorite Contacts” button
• press the volume buttons to scroll through the favorite contacts list
• press the call button.

The favorite contacts list is built up on the last calls made with the phone, which are downloaded on the speakerphone the first time you pair them. Then the list will change over time to your most frequently used contacts when connected to the speakerphone.

Regrettably, at the time of this review my phone (a Palm Treo 650) was not supporting PBAP, and I couldn’t try this nice feature.

If the phone doesn’t support the Bluetooth PBAP profile, you can manually send up to 50 phonebook contacts from the phone to the speakerphone. This didn’t work too with my old phone, due to lack of support to v-card contacts.

Buttons

While using an handsfree device you are supposed to interact the less with it it , so buttons need to be placed carefully to be reached without any driving distraction.

In my experience with the device, I had no problems at all with both the call and mute/favorite contacts button, while finding the volume buttons was less natural. However keep in mind that I needed to use them only a few times and I expect this to become instinctive if you will be using the favorite contacts feature.

Call quality

I made calls in different conditions, ranging from a trafficked street to an empty highway, from a relatively quiet to a noisy music car environment. In every case, I was able to hear my caller, and I received no complaints by the other side.

Battery

The device battery is said to give you up to 17 hours of talk time or up to 2.5 weeks of standby time.

During the 20 days of loan, the T325 was in my car attached to the sun visor starting with a fully charged battery. I didn’t took note of standby time, but in car usage was around 10 hours on call and the device prompted me with the “Battery level is low” message the same day the FedEx courier took it back.

Price

Motorola store has the device at $79.99, but you can find it at lower prices.

Summary

Voice prompts, battery life, and favorite contacts (not tested in this review) are huge selling points of the Motorola T325 In-Car Speakerphone. Add a satisfying call quality and its ease of use and this product will appeal you if you are on the market for a handsfree in-car kit.

Pros: voice prompts, battery life, favorite contacts, large call button, satisfying call quality

Cons: it could take some time getting used to the displacement of the volume buttons

Via: Motorola

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2. Review: Sony Ericsson Bluetooth Car Speakerphone (HCB-120)
3. Review: Motorola H17 Flip Bluetooth Headset
4. Mobis Announces the Just Mobile Bluetune — Bluetooth Speaker and Handsfree Car Kit.
5. Review: The “Gomadic Car and Wall Charger Retractable Hot Sync Compact Kit”…The Only Thing Not Portable Is Its Name.