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:

Motorcycle MacGyvering pt. 2: Driver Backrest

For the second installment of the Motorcycle Mcgyvering series, I want to talk about the driver's backrest I built for my Majesty. Unfortunately, this one won't really translate to other models of bike since the seat design's won't be the same, but hopefully it'll at least give you an idea of what's possible with harvested parts and a little experimentation. 

My original backrest design used the Majesty's "butt pad", raised up on a metal bracket, to serve as a back rest. It worked alright, and looked good, but it lacked lower back support, and left two holes in the seat that were difficult to cover up. 

I settled for this set-up for a while, for lack of any better ideas. However, we had replaced the driver's seat in my family's RV, and the headrest from the original seat seemed like an ideal candidate for a new and improved backrest. If you don't have an extra headrest laying around, you could probably find one at an auto salvage yard. I'd imagine many of them would probably just let you have one for free, especially if the upholstery on it is in bad shape. As long the foam on the inside is ok, it will work fine for these purposes.

I reused the bracket from the first backrest. It basically consists of some flat steel from Home Depot, welded together in the shape of an uppercase "I". I asked a local welding shop to do the welds for me. It took them all of 30 seconds to do them, and they didn't even charge me. I bent the vertical portion of the "I" to match the curve of the seat as closely as I could, and drilled holes in the bottom of the "I" to match the holes in the seat. I then drilled holes in the back of the head rest to push a couple carriage bolts through, and fastened the headrest to the top of the bracket. 

I used a scroll saw to cut a notch out in the back of the butt pad, to allow room for the bracket. In retrospect, I should have been more careful to remove the vinyl material covering the butt pad before cutting it, then  reattached it, instead of trying to pull it out of the way and rewrapping it around the notch. Some electrical tape is currently doing a decent job of covering the edge and holding the cover in place. At some point down the road, I'd like to have both the headrest portion and the butt pad recovered by someone who knows what they're doing. 

The headrest originally had a blue fabric covering it. I removed the fabric, and spray painted the foam as a temporary solution until I can get it recovered.

I held the new backrest in place and sandwiched it between the seat and the butt pad, using the bolts built into the butt pad to hold everything in place. (The yellow line across the seat in this picture is evidence of how insane the tree pollen has been this spring) 

The new backrest is much more comfortable than the first version, providing both upper and lower back support, and placing me in the proper place on the seat. With the butt pad raised up, I felt like I was sitting too far back, as the padding in the seat gets a little thin towards the very back of the seat. Now the seat works as it was originally designed, plus the addition of the backrest. I think that the result looks professional enough, and it will look even better when I get around to getting everything recovered.