Reviews for Parrot CK3100 Car Hands-free Kit

Truly the most advanced on the market.

Strengths: Very small, yet readable screen. Voice recognition stored on device. Synchs with phonebook.

Weakness: No voice recognition of individual digits, only pre-programmed contacts.

I've got this working with my Blackberry 8700c, and it works like a charm. I did have it professionally installed, but it's worth it to me to get it done right, even though I'm pretty handy.

A previous reviewer mentioned he could not get the voice recognition working when his stereo is on, and most of the time couldn't get the phone to pick-up hands-free with incoming calls. I haven't experimented a great deal with these two issues, but they do seem to work for me most of the time. My installer did get the stereo to auto-mute when the parrot is in use.

The device is fairly intuitive for me, but I love gadgets.

For the most part, I can use it COMPLETELY hands free. I say "phone", it picks up, I say a name, it dials, I say "hang up" it hangs up.

It cannot dial digits by voice only, i.e. if I want to dial a number that is not in the phone book, I cannot just speak the number, I have to use the dial on the device. But this can be done without taking my eyes off the road, because the parrot "voice" announces each digit as you scroll through, and you just push the button when you get to the appropriate digit.

Perhaps in a future firmware release they can add the capability to dial by voice recognition of digits.

I did a lot of research on this before purchasing, and the only thing close that I'm aware of is the Motorola IHF1000, but I have heard there are a lot of Bluetooth synchronization issues with that device and non-Motorola phones.

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This is a winner!

Strengths: Works with any mobile phone... and can learn your phone's unique capabilities.

Weakness: Havn't found any yet.

This is an amazing unit. First off, to not even have to check if your phone is compatible... well, hat's off to the people of Parrot. You can teach it to perform virtually any task that your phone is capable of. The easy to read display is small in size but delivers a big display of information. Definitely a winner!

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No less than awesome

Strengths: Easy installation with appropriate harnesses. Ease of use. Excellent voice recognition.

Weakness: Written installation instructions really stink; had to do some research on the net to get things ready for installation.

Just installed the CK3100 into my 1995 Geo Prizm Lsi with an aftermarket cd/dvd/cassette head unit. Had to buy a qctoy-1 wiring harness and splice that to the wiring adapters for the head unit. Splicing took about 10 minutes. Installation of the CK3100 took about 30 minutes. Linked two phones (Blackberry 8830 and LG Fusic) immediately. All contacts transferred without a glitch. Made a dozen voice activated calls without a problem. This is a great handsfree device.

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parrot ck 3100

Strengths: pairs easily and is easy to use

Weakness: instructions for installation suck. lol

easy to install and operate. if you use the wiring adaptors from
cell-site it can be installed in less than an hour. my oldest ck 3100 is over 5 years old and has been trouble free.

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parrot ck3100

Strengths: great sound quality, mutes radio when call comes in. caller ID

Weakness: had a hard time getting it installed even with the wire harness because of the type of factory radio I have. Definately need to purchase the wire harness foryour vehicle which will run about $50. Stil

Overall the product works pretty well as stated earlier, you must purchase the wire harness for your vehicle and you may still have some issues getting it to work properly depending on the type of radio you have. It took 3 attempts by a professional to get it working properly. If I can get the voice recognition to work a little bit better then the product will be great. I am contacting parrot to see if there is anything I can do to increase the voice recognition.

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Great Product!

Strengths: Once installed by professional, easy pairing with most phones, great voice quality and convenience.

Weakness: Professional installation required. Synchronizing with some Nokia phones not complete.

Professional installation(about $100) required. Except for a few European cars, your installer will have to splice wires to attach to your stereo wiring. Having an amplified stereo complicates things a bit. But the good news is that it is doable. You may just have to call a few car stereo/alarm installers in your town until you find one who has experience installing "hands-free" kits.
Once installed, the product is fantastic and it is hard to imagine how one could have lived without it before.
I setup 4 different phones with it so far. The smoothest one has been a Sony Ericsson T610. The phone book, recent calls sync automatically and continously.
My Nokia 3650 paired with it quickly but I had to download an add program on the Nokia phone to make it sync contacts with the Parrot. Recent calls do not sync though.
I have also setup a BlackBerry 7105t and a Motorola v360, for these 2 recent calls sync automatically but not the phonebook.
I haven't set up voice dialing yet but I am sure this will be great once I set it up. You can program auto commands for answering, dialing and hanging up and you can also program voice tags for up to 200 phone book entries for each cell phone that is paired up.
The only caution there is that if you ever upgrade the firmware on the Parrot (shouldn't need to unless you were not able to pair up your phone in the first place) you will need to reprogram the 200 voice tags. You may be able to get around this if you store the voice tags on your phone itself.
Parrot also recently announced some color models. I haven't seen them on sale yet but I am waiting for the CK3200 to install on our second car.
Finally, you should be aware also of other models: CK3300, same as this model but adds GPS positioning that can be sent to a bluetooth PDA, smartphone or laptop.
CK3200: color LCD version of this model, will show more info from the phone on the LCD.
CK 3400, color version of the CK3300.

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CK3100 Voice Recognition Handsfree Bluetooth Car Kit

Strengths: Easily transfers addresses into the phone log. "Announces" the origin of incoming calls provided the phone number has been voice-programmed. Mutes stereo for incoming calls. Outstanding tech support!

Weakness: Worthless instructions, voice-programming of phone numbers in log book is time consuming and voice-command feature has significant limitations.

The instructions included with the product are useless. If not for the two gentlemen who responded to my queries every day for a week (most cordially, I might add), I would never have been able to use this product. I got their number from my installer (the "standards" noted above precludes me from including their number, sorry). This is my second voice-command product I've had installed in my car, and I truly believe not being able to voice the dial pad is a significant oversight by the manufacturer, given that I had this function in my previous unit for the last 3 years. Also, under most circumstances, the product cannot answer incoming calls via voice command (you need to press a button to initiate the call). Although this voice feature is supposed to work faithfully according to Parrot tech support, I only have success picking-up calls via "voice" when my car stereo is off, and the incoming call is not "announced" by the unit (is foreign to my voice-programmed phone log). Furthermore, if you don't take the time to voice-program each number in the phone log, you will not have hands-free dialing of those numbers.

Once you are convinced that the phone numbers you will need to dial routinely are voice-programmed, along with the product's keywords, you are good to go. In this regard the Parrot CK3100 gets an overall satisfactory rating.

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Parrot CK3100 Car Hands-free Kit

Strengths: The company responds quickly to email requests for support.

Weakness: The claim that most radios conform to the ISO standard is completely false! Expect to purchase a seperate wiring harness for $20-$50. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT if you want to install in in a Lexus or Toyota Solara having the JBL amplified radio!

The Parrot CK3100 may be a marvelous product, but believe me when I tell you that it absolutely can not be installed in most American built automobiles without purchasing a wiring harness from another company. While there is a company in the US that makes this wiring harness for most cars, unfortunately they do not make one for my Toyota Solara. I will be reselling my Parrot CK3100 on Ebay soon.

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Great Bluetooth Handsfree kit for car

Strengths: Easy to use; Automatic Download of Cell Phone Address Book; Voice Dialing for names in address book; Great Tech US based tech support Incoming call name announcement for names in address book.

Weakness: Lack of voice dialing of digits; Weak product manual; Display needs to be brighter.

I love my Parrot CK3100 Bluetooth car kit. It connects to my cell phone as soon as I get into the car and downloads address book from my cell. It allows me to voice dial tagged contacts in my address book. People that I talk to say voice quality is excellent. Tech support is excellent and US based. Manual is pretty scimpy, but tech support pointed me to several documents that were excellent. Kit comes with many mounting options. Parrot and their partners offer adapter cable kits for many cars. Parrot also will supply instructions for those wishing to use an external speaker rather than messing with car audio system. There are two areas I'd like to see improved: (1) I'd like to be be able to voice dial digits for names not in address book and for retrieving voicemail messages. (2) I'd like to be able to make the display brighter.

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Parrot CK3100

THE GOOD: The Parrot CK3100 is a cost-effective Bluetooth hands-free calling system with some surprisingly advanced calling features including a decent voice-command interface and a useful phonebook-syncing feature. THE BAD: Programming in voice tags for contacts can be time consuming, and there is no option for dialing individual numbers by voice. THE BOTTOM LINE: The Parrot CK3100 combines a...

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Parrot CK3100

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