Chatterbox XBI

Sorry for the delay in posting. Since my last post, I picked up a Chatterbox XBI Bluetooth headset for my full face helmet. It replaced the CAMOS - for reasons I am happy to detail!

The CAMOS is a total and absolute joke! The US distributor, Benchmark Helmets, is also a joke. The product has marginal (and that is being generous) documentation and required 3 seperate phone calls to Benchmark Helmets to get to work. When I finally did, the unit was used exactly 4 times. Then it quit working. I phoned the retail outlet trying to get a return - and they dropped the line from their inventory citing "Too many returns, no support". I then chased Benchmark - for several months. They finally got me an RMA number and I shipped the unit back to them. 4 months later, I don't have a replacement unit from them nor do I have my money back. Phone calls and emails to them go unanswered. STAY AWAY from CAMOS and Bluetooth Helmets (unless you are just a glutton for punishment).

I got the XBI in mid-August. I was doing a fair bit of tooling around on multi-day bike rides. I wanted music and/or traffic reports as well as to be able to receive calls from work/home. The unit does this VERY well. Setup was not that great - and ultimately did require one call to their tech support. Fortunately, they were helpful and we got the sync question resolved while they were on the phone.

Battery life is good - but I hope in future versions they improve it slightly. Starting with a fully charged headset, I got about 3 hours of talk time out of it before the headset lost power. Yeah, I know - what was I doing on a 3 hour phone call on the bike? Working actually - taking a conference call that couldn't be avoided.

That actually talks to the quality of the sound. No one on the call knew I was on a bike in motion! Now, my participation on the call was primarily listening.