We first reported on IOGEAR’s green, solar bluetooth speakerphone at CES this year. The concept was so simple yet elegantly executed, that we were pretty eager to get our hands on a shipping unit.

Really. There hasn’t been a lot of buzz for bluetooth gear. It’s pretty typical, but a solar power handsfree device somehow just spurs on our inner geek. Quite literally there was a fight over who would test this product. The lucky folks, one of our testers and Sara were so giddy with excitement they grabbed and proceeded to quickly slap the units on their cars and drove off.

I’m not really sure if they were excited to test or just eager to go. I’ll leave it at eager to test.

Full charge takes a few hours through solar. The manual says about 14-16 hours, however, IOGEAR does include a car charger and you only need about 4 hours to get full charge from the plug-in charger. After that, the sun’s power is more than enough to keep the charge going.

Included are two vehicle mounts. One is a suction cup mount that the handsfree model just slides into, much like a belt holster for your cell phone. Once in, it clicks into place and holds securely on your windsheild. How securely? Well, pull then entire mount to remove and you’ll find the suction cups are still on the glass. That’s pretty rock solid.

In some states, you can’t drive with anything mounted on your windshield. It’s illegal and you’ll get a ticket that can get pretty expensive. So, it’s important to check you local laws about it before mounting this or any other devices to your windshield.

IOGEAR, has thought of this and includes a second mount for your visor. It’s the belt clip like model and clips securely onto your visor much like a garage door opener would (only cooler).

You can clip it backwards with the solar panels facing you and then flip your visor out towards the sun for charging. Our testers, preferred to mount the unit on the upper corner, driver’s side windshield.

If you’re worried about thieves marking your car from the suction cup marks or having the unit mounted on your windshield, the visor mount or taking it with you is probably the best bet.

Large single button in the unit makes it easy to operate. We tried to use it like a headset to make voice command calls. It looked like it would work, but there was too much wind noise to get an accurate voice ID. Windows up, no problems or at least the same problems you’d expect from any handsfree device wired or not.

Volume up is nice and loud. Turned up all the way, it will fill the car no problem, so you’ll be sharing the call for real. However, when mounted on the windshield, voices from the back would sometimes cancel out unless you speak out.

Still these are not drawbacks of the unit from IOGEAR. In our experience, these are typical issues you’ll find with speakerphones in general.

During our testing, we only paired with one phone at a time, although the unit does support multi-point so you’re able to pair multiple devices to it. Our concern here is having the single unit mounted and paired with two phones could just get really confusing. If you’re up for it though, IOGEAR’s got your back.

Call quality reported by both testers (same network, same phones, speakerphone to speakerphone calls) were excellent. When calling a landline, the other party definitely knows that they’re on a speakerphone, but still call quality was clear and no annoying bathroom stall like echos in the background.

Positioning though, is really important. Mount the unit low and turn on the defrost and you’ve got a formula for a problem. From our testing, there is some noise cancelation going on as background wind noise was cut down, but turn on the defrost full blast and it’s just not a good idea for this unit or any other speakerphone.

If you want to share the call with everyone, a-la conference style, we found moving the unit to the center console of the car effectively allowed everyone to speak their minds.

Not in the manual, but we tested pairing with a laptop and VOIP calls, iChat, Skype, etc, all worked flawlessly. Of course, we got the complaint of why we were using a speakerphone, but you get the idea. It works, but it’s not really intended for home use.

We’ve read a few on-line user testimonials and found them not to be what we found. Some were overly harsh on the length of time required for a full solar charge, others complain about cloud cover effecting charge time. In our test, we fully charged via included USB car charger and proceeded to use the unit over a full week of rain, cloudy, and sunny skies without having to charge again.

Typically, we’d talk on the unit about 1-2 hours in the car and even brought it indoors sometimes to use at our desks as a second speaker phone. We recorded about 3-5 hours of total usage and both units tested never needed to be plugged in during our weeklong trial.

Overall, we’re pretty pleased with the unit. Easy to use, simple, straightforward and even elegant design, really make IOGEAR’s unit standout. From a speakerphone standpoint, IOGEAR’s unit does what it says. It’s a speakerphone. Add in bluetooth for handsfree calling and the cool solar charging…it’s a Golden Bucket Winner.

MSRP is around $60, however you can score it on-line from around $38-$50 depending on where you shop. If you find it for $38, then you’ve got a Golden Bucket Deal on your hands.

Again, be sure to check your local state laws on where you can mount this and other items before buying.

More details available at IOGEAR.

(Legal Note: Our lawyer wants us to tell everyone that this is an independent review of IOGEAR Solar Bluetooth Handsfree Car Kit. Tech Bucket Blog LLC did not pay for the product being reviewed. We requested and received this item from representatives of IOGEAR. We are never and were not compensated for our opinions or recommendation of this or any other product we review. We offer our opinions based upon our own independent testing and offer no express or implied warranties on any statement that we make. It is simply our opinion. Your experience may differ. As our policy is not to be compensated for our reviews, we are never directed in one direction (positive or negative) about this or any product we review.)

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