Parrot MKi9200 Hands-Free Car Kit

This is a great alternative if your car does not come already kitted with bluetooth or your radio does not have an aux jack. Once installed preferably with an approved installer, unless you can install it yourself, it works flawlessly (note you will need to purchase an additional SOT lead specifically for your model of car ) it bypasses the car radio so the radio doesn't need to be switched on, but the sound is routed through the car speakers. The kit comes with many useful features. You can pair up to two phones at a time and phonebook is downloaded on the kit for easy access it synchronises each time your phone connects to it and adds new contacts. Sound quality it brilliant whilst playing music, rich base sound, equaliser, base, volume etc can be adjusted to your liking using remote control, microphone works well during voice calls, though on occasion voice recognition doesn't appear to work well so you have to scroll through phone book to make a call which is a minor flaw which maybe over time may be rectified after it gets used to my pronunciation . Screen display is clear and easy to read, comes with aux cables so you can play music via ipod or any device that does not have bluetooth. The manufacturers have thought of everything as you can system update the kit via the usb cable supplied which negates the need to buy a newer kit in the future unless you really want to. Though the kit may appear expensive compared to the clip on or connect via cigarette lighter type bluetooth kits on the market it is worth every penny in the long run as it works really well and can be transferred to another car if you ever decide buy a new one. The only thing extra you will need in addition will be a new SOT to suit.

I bought this device after lots of researching and after being told by a professional installer that it would not work with the OEM radio in a Mazda 2 (the one with LCD and volume button located inside a plastic circle below the CD slot). The car-compatibility wizard on the Parrot website, however, disagreed and advised me to to buy this adapter cable:INKA-902848-80-3A ISO SOT Mute Lead for Parrot......which fortunately worked (it seems that not all of the adapters advertised to be compatible with the Mazda 2 actually work). The MKi9200 is a somewhat basic BT kit but it works more or less flawlessly. The only gripe I have is that when using Bluetooth it takes the MKi9200 a few seconds to connect to, and synchronise with, my iPhone 4S. Also, pressing the play button on the remote does not cause the MKi9200 to start playing music even though the MKi9200 has synchronised with the phone. I have to jumpstart the Bluetooth connection by pressing the play button on the phone it self or go into the settings menu on the MKi9200 and select the 'connect' option. Only then will the play button on the little remote that comes with the MKi9200 start working as expected. The remote is a bit clunky but it is way more useful than I expected it to be. I glued mine to the steering wheel. Note that the iPhone is not listed in the device list in the MKi9200. I had to select the 'Force' option to get the MKi9200 to pair with my iPhone. Haven't tested the microphones yet.Edit: Have not found a workaround for having to 'jump start' music playing after synchronizing to get the play button on the remote working but the MKi9200 will transition smoothly into a song that is already playing on your iPhone when it boots up. Also tested the call feature. So far I have had none of the usual 'I can hardly hear you' complaints that one usually gets with hands free equipment, this feature works fine. As for Audio quality, dunno, considering the Bluetooth compression, an OEM radio and OEM speakers I'm quite happy with it. It does help to play around with the audio profiles in your phone but you may want to look elsewhere if you are an audiophile chasing concert quality.

I have one of these in my own car which I installed in myself.They are very easy to install, as long as you have some basic understanding of your cars electrical system then you can fit it yourself.The sound quality is so much better than some highend preinstalled systems I have experienced.For both cars I installed this into adaptors were needed as the connectors on this units wiring did not match the cars, and the wheel controls don't control this without yet another adaptor, so there is a little more expense than first thought with this.I use mine all the time, for playing back music from my phone via Bluetooth, sound won go as load this way but using it at normal levels you would never notice it was coming from a phone.updates happen frequently and deliver some good new functions, so far these updates have give me option of connecting two phones at the same time, voice call control (answering the phone), and one I have only partly experienced is text message read back (however I was changing track when I noticed it so I only got the first word of my text.Only real issue I found this time round is that I fitted this into a car with 5 speakers, and at the moment when a call comes in the middle front speaker wont mute.I'm sure this is a wiring issue but as yet I haven't tracked down the correct wiring changes that I need to make to fix it.one improvement I really want is for different connectors on the wired options, get a female USB port, a male headphone connector, and a 30 pin apple connector.I have a Nokia & a Blackberry which both have the very common mini USB, and using a cable into the USB port doesn't really work, and wont charge the phones. Think the USB port is more for the software upgrades than anything else.However would recommend any of the Parrot Car kits over most other systems out there.