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Provides: Bluetooth speakerphone
Developer: Contour
Minimum Requirements: Bluetooth capable cell phone
Price: $99.95
Availability: Now

I think we can all agree that driving while talking on a cell phone is borderline premeditated murder. But if you have to talk on the phone while driving, you have a few options to keep your hands clean. You could get a Bluetooth headset, but maybe you’re sick of having a hunk of plastic in your ear. Or maybe you desire to look just a little more crazy by appearing to talk to thin air with a Bluetooth speakerphone. No matter what your reasons, Contour has your back with the SurfaceSound Bluetooth speakerphone.

The SurfaceSound Compact Bluetooth speakerphone is just that, a Bluetooth speakerphone. It’s intended to be used in your car, since the clip on the backside is made to attach to your visor. If you for some reason wanted to remove it, you can. And the package is complete with a USB cable and an adapter to charge in your car.

One of the things that makes this product so sleek and sexy is how thin it is.  It’s really quite remarkable how they fit this much technology into about half an inch of space.  The speaker itself is rectangular, and the mic is located on a movable arm that turns the device on and off.  Just raise the arm to turn it on and you’re ready to make and take calls.

The sound quality is on par with Bluetooth headsets.  Even though it’s a speakerphone, you still want to be fairly close to it.  The further away you get, the more you sound like you’re in a cavern.  The speaker gets loud, so you’ll be able to overpower even the most pissed off drivers’ horns on the freeway.

I was taken aback by how well the echo cancellation works.  You’d think that if you put a mic right next to a speaker and connected the two, you’d have problems.  Somehow, they figured out how to fix that, and it works.  This thing is like a duck’s quack; there is no echo.  None.  Nadda.

A quick note; since most Macs support Bluetooth, you can use this for chatting with friends on iChat in addition to your normal cell phone in the car use.  You might actually like this idea, since it would route all iChat/Skype audio through this device, keeping it separate from whatever else is going on on your system.

The only real downside to this unit—aside from perhaps the steep price—is the USB cable required to charge it.  It would have been so much easier to just use a standard USB type B connector (that’s the standard small one that many of your gadgets likely use).  Instead, they chose to put a super extra tiny micro connector on this thing.  This isn’t really a problem, since they give you the cable, but it would be nice to be able to use the same cable for numerous things. Maybe it was a thinness issue, but I would have taken the bulk over this connection type for cable convenience.  Just don’t lose that cable; you’ll have a hard time replacing it.

I really like this Bluetooth speakerphone.  If you talk on your mobile quite often, then it might get old to have a headset in your ear all day long.  This is a great product for those who spend a lot of time talking on the cell in the car.  You could even get a lot of use out of it in your office.  There’s no question on the quality of this product, because it’s great.  You just have to decide if having a wireless speakerphone is worth $100 to you.