Product Review: Motorcycle Headset for iPhone

Before reading this product review, you should skim over my post: Motorcycle MacGyvering pt. 1: iPhone Helmet Headset. As there are no other commercially available helmet headsets for the iPhone, at least that I've been able to find, that post will give you an idea of what I'm comparing to.

This is a review of bikeintercom.com's motorcycle helmet headset designed specifically for the iPhone. The headset arrived packaged in a plastic bag, basically as you see it in the photo to the left. The overall build quality seemed good, especially compared to my homemade version. The design is thoughtful, and easily adaptable to many different helmet styles.

The speakers and microphone come with velcro and 3m adhesive to mount them inside the helmet, and I found that it adhered to the helmet lining better than most adhesive velcroes I've used.

The headset includes a button, used to answer calls, play and pause music, and skip tracks on the iPhone, as well as a velcro strap to attach the button to the handlebars. This allows you to control the iPhone without removing your hands from the handlebars. The strap would work well on bikes with bare bars. However, the strap isn't long enough for bikes like mine, with plastic bodywork covering the bars. I found strapping it on to the left hand mirror stem worked well though. A piece of adhesive velcro placed somewhere within reach of your thumb would work also. The button is large and easy to find and manipulate, even with winter gloves on.

My first tests of the headset showed that the microphone worked well. Though it didn't eliminate all wind noise by any means, the person on the other end could understand me clearly and easily.

My first tests of the speakers, however, were not as successful. With them installed as intended, inside the ear pockets in my helmet, music sounded tinny and muffled, and phone conversations weren't even loud enough to understand at city traffic speeds, let alone on the interstate. To be fair, my helmet, an HJC SyMax, has deeper ear pockets than most, putting the speakers farther away from my ears then they were probably meant to be.

I did manage to work around this issue somewhat, by cutting two pieces of soft foam to the shape of the speakers and hot glueing it to the inside of the ear pockets. I then attached the speaker velcro to the foam, bringing the speakers in much closer to my ears. This helped quite a bit, especially with the sound quality for listening to music. The volume of the speakers, especially on a windy day, is still a little on the low side.

Though the speakers are less than perfect, I think one of the best parts of the products design is that the speakers attach to the rest of the headset with a regular 3.5mm headphone style jack. This means that you can easily swap out the included speakers with any helmet speakers you like. For the price of BikeIntercom.com's headset ($49.99) you could get the iPhone compatible headset and a higher quality set of helmet speakers and still come in under the price of many helmet headsets. I did notice that BikeIntercom.com carries three different levels of helmet speakers, the X Pro, the X2, and the X3. Based on the pictures on their website, it looks like the iPhone set-up comes with the X2s, which seem to be the bottom end of the three. It might be worth asking what that cost difference would be to upgrade to different speakers before ordering, though I haven't personally tested the others.

I think the iPhone Motorcycle Headset is a worthwhile product, though not perfect, and with the popularity of the iPhone, I'm surprised there aren't more companies making headsets compatible with it. The $49.99 price point comes in much lower than similar products, and other than the disappointing speakers, the bargain price doesn't seem to come at the expense of quality.

Just as a side note, BikeIntercom.com has several other products that are worth looking at as well, including a throat mic set-up, which is a technology that I've always thought would be ideal for motorcyclists, and and system with a microphone that mounts to the inside top of the helmet, and apparently picks up the vibrations in your skull when you speak.

If anyone else has any experience with this product, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Update: BikeIntercom.com has posted a video to their YouTube account explaining installation and operation of the iPhone headset:

Talking on 2 Wheels

Since my article about the iPhone Helmet Headset, I've been talking with a lot of people about using a phone while riding, especially in regards to safety. In response to what seems to be a fairly heated debate, I'd like to make my own thoughts on the matter clear.

First of all, I've always been critical of people driving with a cell phone to their ear. It's statistically been made pretty obvious that it cuts into your reaction time and distracts you from the road. Using a hands free system helps, but due to the fact that the person on the other end of the line can't see or react to things that the driver can, the driver is still distracted. This rule applies to motorcyclists as well. If you're paying more attention to the voice in your helmet than the road in front of you, there's a pretty good chance you may miss something (or worse, hit something you probably should have missed). 

The problem I find with this argument is that it just seems a little too black and white to me. There's definitely a gray area to be considered here. Yes, I will answer my phone if it rings while I'm on the road, but that doesn't mean that I'm chit-chatting about last nights episode of American Idol. I'll answer to tell someone I'm on my way, or get a message about, say, picking up a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread on the way home, but if someone calls me just to chat, or to talk about anything more extensive than a minute long conversation, I always tell them that I'll call them back when I'm not on the road anymore. What I definitely won't do is make an outgoing call while riding. That would require focusing not just some of my attention, but my vision as well, on my phone, and that's a risk I'm not willing to take. 

As for those who feel that listening to music while riding is too much of a distraction, how many of you listen to the radio in your car? The DOT, as well as the MSF I believe, actually recommend wearing earplugs while riding to eliminate some of the wind noise. Music is not much different, as far as I'm concerned. 

I'd love to hear some other opinions on this one, so please don't hesitate to leave comments.

p.s. I know the guy in my stolen stock photo looks like a real tool. Try not to let that affect your opinion too much...

Motorcycle MacGyvering pt. 1: iPhone Helmet Headset

This is the first of what I hope to be a series, about homemade gadgets, gizmos, and dohickeys, made in true Angus MacGyver style (i.e. making it up as I go along, with whatever happens to be on hand).

First of all, I want to talk about the iPhone. When I first heard about it, I thought it was God's (or at least Steve Jobs') gift to motorcyclists. I can listen to my music AND answer my phone while riding. If I'm lost, I can pull over and use Google Maps to find my way and I can use the internet to find road suggestions/restaurants/campsites/repair shops/almost anything else.

Anyway, since January when I got an iPhone all my own, I've been thoroughly enjoying all the aforementioned things. However, like all things, it's not perfect. The 3/4'' jack for the headset means that most cell phone headsets won't work. You can use bluetooth headsets, but it lacks the protocol for stereo via bluetooth, making listening to music mediocre at best. It does come with a decent set of white earbuds with a built in microphone, and I've been getting by with that so far. The earbuds don't fit my ears particularly well though, and they tend to come loose on the road. The microphone has a built in button to answer/reject calls, pause and play your music, and skip tracks. The mic and the button both work fairly well, but it dangles down almost at your throat, making talking into it while riding less than effective.

So, now that the problems are clear, how do we remedy them, preferably without spending any cash? The first step was to replace the earbuds with something that won't come loose and move around on me.

I found this video, explaining a simple way to replace the earbuds without losing the functionality of the mic. The earbuds don't come apart quite as easily as they do in the video. It required a small screwdriver to pry them apart, but other than that it went fairly smoothly.

The next step was to find some replacement speakers. I had a set of larger over-the-ear headphones sitting in the back of a drawer. If I remember right they cost about $20 when I bought them, several years ago. I attached them to the ends of my iPhone headset and checked to make sure they worked. Success! I also adhered some velcro to the backs of the speakers to attach them to the inside of the helmet. The velcro turned out to not really be necessary, but it doesn't hurt.

Now that I had the new speakers ready to go, all I had to do was attach them to my helmet. As it turns out, the speakers fit perfectly into the ear space in the cheek pads on my HJC SyMax. I'm not sure what the little straps are intended for, but they do a great job of holding the speakers in place. The velcro helps to add just a little more security to them, but I really don't think they'd go anywhere without it.

After I snapped the cheek pads back in place, with the new speakers inside them, I attached a small piece of the hook side of the velcro to the back of the mic. The velcro holds it onto the liner inside the helmet. Keeping it up inside the helmet eliminated a lot of the wind noise, but it's still easy to access the button by reaching up inside from the bottom of the helmet with my left hand.

The final step was to use an awl to make a small hole in the padding running along the bottom of the helmet, in the back. I tucked the wire up inside the padding, and ran it out through the hole. It's not quite long enough to reach into my pants pocket, but as long as I keep my phone in the inner pocket on my jacket, it's long enough.

Once it was all together, I took a ride around the block and had someone call my phone to test it all out. The only part that's not perfect is the volume. I can hear it okay, but I'd like it to be just slightly louder. (Edit: After fiddling with the speakers a bit and moving them slightly farther forward, the volume issue is at least somewhat better. Just play with them a bit to fit your head.) The larger speakers are probably a little underpowered compared to the little earbuds they replaced, but they get the job done, and for the price (essentially nothing since I just used things from the junk drawer) they really can't be beat.

p.s The iPhone also allows me to take simple pictures like these without having to mess with my real camera gear, so expect to see a lot more photos for non ride report entries.

Update: See my review of a less homemade iPhone headset here.