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The Real Deal

I played with one of these at Best Buy and thought the display was hard to read and the knob and buttons felt cheap. When I ordered my unit I got the newer all BLACK version display panel and these things have been improved. I chose the 3100 model because I realized I don’t have a lot of space on my cars dash to put a lot of displays.

I ordered mine with not just a custom wiring harness for my 1998 Accord EX, but with a custom wiring harness which includes prewired mute configuration (quickconnectproducts dot com). I was dreading having to run the wiring for power until I realized I didn’t have too!! The power is also automatically taken via the wiring harness from the power going to the radio. I installed it myself in about 1 hour.

The Parrot has some thoughtful ergonomic design. Very functional. For example, when you turn your key ignition off while on a call, instead of going dead and dropping the call, it continues to to stay on and asks you if you would like to transfer the audio back to the phone! How cool is that.

Audio quality is great. First, unlike my 2008 RAV4 factory bluetooth which is very good, the Parrot is FULL DUPLEX which means both of you can talk at the same time which allows much smoother conversations. It has the magic DSP background noise elimination so callers don’t hear the road noise. All the echo is cancelled as well, and your voice is processed to remain strong and loud despite being distant from the microphone. Callers tell me I sound like I am directly talking on the phone and not on a speaker phone. The Parrot audio amp which sends sound to the car speakers does have a small amount of high frequency hiss/noise in the background; however this isn’t a problem as you can only hear it when the engine is shut off.

Even though the Parrot doesn’t have an interface for your steering wheel controls (I don’t have them anyway), you can still operate some of the key functions via voice recognition. Because the Parrot voice recognition limits you to half a dozen voice commands, they actually work!

The 2-3 line display of the Parrot CK3100 is plenty of display for me. Some users may not even need a model with a display. The display indicates phone battery charge and cellular signal strength, although on my Palm Treo 700p with Verizon the cell signal strength is not accurate as displayed on the CK3100 display.

Mounting the display and microphone for these types of devices in a car is always a challenge. However, the Parrot kit includes several different mounts for both the display and microphone. Some quite unique and helpful. The best assortment of actually useful mounting hardware I have seen.

When talking on my cell phone while driving, I am aware that my attention is diverted. I don’t like it. So for some time now I have used a Plantronics headset (great product). That improved the situation some but then I tried talking via bluetooth speakerphone in our 2008 RAV4. Talking on speakerphone is VERY different. It is much safer in my opinion. It is just like talking to the person sitting next to you in the car. I would encourage everyone who wants to be a safer less distracted driver while on the cell to get a GOOD QUALITY FULL DUPLEX speakerphone for their car. The Parrot 3100 fits the bill.

Update (5/20/2012): This item is currently on sale here for the lowest price I’ve seen.

The featured review for this product, Parrot CK3100 Bluetooth LCD Display Car Kit Electronics, was written by L. Arthur.

The average rating for this item is 3.7 out of 5 stars, according to 3 reviews.