Jabra Freeway hands-on

CTIA 2011: Ears and voice-on with the Bluetooth speaker

Jabra Freeway hands-on. speakers, Audio, Bluetooth speakers, Jabra, CTIA2011, Jabra Freeway, 0

30 March 2011 9:24 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Bluetooth speakers for the car are pretty boring, let’s face it. They do their job, but normally run out of juice because you forget to turn them off and then you’re left with a lump of plastic and speaker that’s good for nothing.

Well, that’s not the idea of the Jabra Freeway, a stereo speaker that promises to deliver much more, and maybe even make you want to go to your car to make a call.

We caught up with Jabra at CTIA in Orlando, Florida to find out what it was all about.

We have to admit, there's a fondness for the little details here at Pocket-lint, the things that might not seem that important on the spec sheet, but actually make the most difference in real life.

Take the automatic on and off feature of the Jabra Freeway. It will turn on when you turn start the ignition and power down 15 minutes after you turn off the engine. How does it know to do that? It’s got a sensor built in that knows when the car is vibrating and, therefore, that you must be driving. If it’s clever enough to do that, it’s also clever enough to know not to cut you off if you’re sat in a car park or a layby making a call, and you run beyond your 15 minutes of rest time. How do we know that? We asked.

But, it’s not just a simple on/off switch that impresses us. There's also the three speaker quality, the ability to control it through voice commands, and, if the information is there, the ability for the Jabra Freeway to tell you who is calling by saying the name out loud so you don’t have to take your eyes of the road.

And the Freeway supports two Bluetooth devices at the same time, and you can also use if for A2DP music streaming. Yep, this doubles as a picnic speaker system too.

With up to 14 hours talk time and up to 40 days standby time, it should last you plenty of phone calls home to your mother while stuck in traffic.

We will have a more extensive review once we can get our hands on a retail unit. The Jabra Freeway is due out some time in April.

Full tags
Audio, Bluetooth speakers, Jabra, CTIA2011, Jabra Freeway, Speakers

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