Tesco Easy To Use Car Kit For Nokia

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In appearance the Tesco kit (it’s actually Dextra Accessories supplied kit) looks quite neat. There are no extra connections to make, no microphones to ‘velcro’ by the sun visor, no speakers to clamp to an air vent.

The whole shebang comes as one piece with a long cigar lighter connector protruding from the base. The length of this could be its attraction and its let down, depending on your car.

In my Yaris T-Sport, ...
...are a cheap alternative. This Tesco kit is much lower ‘tech’, more like “Bluedenture” perhaps.

SO WHO IS IT USEFUL FOR?

For people like me I guess. I stand to receive one call a month whilst driving, but it would appear that when I do, it’s important, if only to save a wasted journey. I’m not too worried about call quality and I’ll probably be better able to hear them than they can me, unless I’m standing in a queue ... more

I really can’t stand mobile phones except to marvel at their technical attributes. Being in touch constantly is not something that I feel too strongly about. However, once or twice recently, I’ve been incommunicado whilst in the car when being in receipt of a call would have saved me some considerable time spent sitting in traffic jams.

If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than having to have a mobile, it’s the people who still think it’s OK to use a handheld mobile whilst they drive, and yes, why ARE they always behind me, not looking forwards, as they move away?

According to a blurb I received reminding me that my Toyota was due a service last month, an in-car kit for my bog-standard Nokia mobile was ‘only’ going to cost me £139. Bugger that, I could buy three more phones for that price!

What I needed was something cheap to allow me to take the odd incoming call – no way will I be dialling out whilst driving, and at my expense.

I’ve seen some cheap hands-free kits and some REALLY cheap hands-free kits. ‘Cheap’ as in £1.99. Something tells me that they would last about two minutes before something broke.

Then I spotted a £19.99 job in Tesco’s the other day. That sounds more like my kind of price, ten times higher than the two quid job and seven times less than letting a Toyota dealer loose on the car, which is already two years old.

In appearance the Tesco kit (it’s actually Dextra Accessories supplied kit) looks quite neat. There are no extra connections to make, no microphones to ‘velcro’ by the sun visor, no speakers to clamp to an air vent.

The whole shebang comes as one piece with a long cigar lighter connector protruding from the base. The length of this could be its attraction and its let down, depending on your car.

In my Yaris T-Sport, it only just about allows me to eject a CD, but in my wife’s Smart, it obstructs the dashboard tray for oddments.

It purports to be suited to a wide range of Nokia phones from the older 3210, through the 33/34/25/82 and 83 ranges, in fact most of the conventionally shaped Nokias of recent years.

Once the phone is seated into the clamp, and pressed home onto the power socket and headset jack, it’s connected to the kit, and if your kit is already in the cigar lighter socket, that’s all there is to it. A green LED shows that power is being received, and by pressing the ‘Charge’ button, a red LED comes on to show that you are also charging the phone. I’m not quite clear why you get the choice. Why wouldn’t you want to be charging the phone?

The success of your calls and their transmission quality can depend on many things. Things like how far the cigar socket is from your mouth – this dictates how far you are from the built-in microphone. In my wife’s Smart this is only about 24”, in fact most things are only 24” from you in a Smart, including the cars in front and behind! The distance from the mike can have a great effect on whether you sound like you’re shouting from the other end of a barn or not.

Likewise internal noise levels will reflect in the call quality received at the other end and whether you can hear your caller – the built-in speaker faces backwards from the rear of the kit, in my case into a dashboard cubby-hole, which, curiously, does actually seem to amplify the voice. If you have a noisy car, drive with the window open or have a cabriolet with the roof down, I’d forget buying one of these. In such cases, you probably need something that puts both the sound output and the microphone much nearer to your head, a Bluetooth headset for example although wired headsets are a cheap alternative. This Tesco kit is much lower ‘tech’, more like “Bluedenture” perhaps.

SO WHO IS IT USEFUL FOR?

For people like me I guess. I stand to receive one call a month whilst driving, but it would appear that when I do, it’s important, if only to save a wasted journey. I’m not too worried about call quality and I’ll probably be better able to hear them than they can me, unless I’m standing in a queue at the time.

Wild horses couldn’t make me send a call whilst driving, but the relatively small intrusion of pressing one button to answer the phone can be practiced without taking your eyes of the road, and there’s even a good few car radios that you can’t say that for!

TECHNICAL BUMPF

Some of this is straight from the packing, with my own additions in brackets.

Easy-fit installation (can’t argue with that)

Integral hands-free speaker and holder (or that)

Flexible cigar lighter connection for optimum positioning (Hmmm, I’d question the use of the word ‘optimum’, even though it doesn’t obstruct gear changes, it hides my preset radio channel buttons 5 & 6.See picture below. It really all depends on where your cigar lighter socket is)

Noise & echo cancelling functions (they must be automatic then, coz there’s no buttons for them, although to be fair, two way conversations do seem to work OK)

Full duplex communications (you can both talk at the same time, unlike some walkie-talkies)

Charging function (yes, but why make it switch-able? Can you damage a phone by charging it all the time?)

Volume control (seems to work only for the separate privacy earpiece, not supplied)

LED indicators (whoopee-doo)

Suitable for 12v and 24v vehicles (useful if you’re a truck driver, who wants to take their phone with them from the car, although the noise in the cab of an artic, plus the fact that you probably sit farther from the phone/cigar socket might make it inoperable)

2.5 mm socket for use with personal hands-free privacy (is that English?)

PROBLEMS

None really, apart from not knowing exactly until you’ve unwrapped it whether it’s going to suit your dashboard, and yes, why do they pack it so you have to get home, and find some industrial-strength scissors to cut the bubble-pack open? If the packaging unclipped open, you could check straight away, and be over at Customer Services getting your money back in minutes.

The plug for the cigar lighter is a very tight fit, as you’d expect for something that sits out on a limb with the weight of a cell-phone pressing down on it. However, when it comes to removing it, a slight twisting action may be needed, otherwise you run the risk of pulling your dashboard apart!

We had some initial problems with getting the outgoing transmission (i.e. the mike connection) to work, but in the end I was forced to conclude that the socket on our (even) older Nokia 3210 was faulty, as the two 3310’s in the house seemed to work OK.

CONCLUSION

As long as you don’t expect this to be a Rolls-Royce solution and just need to take the odd call or two in a not-too-noisy car, then it is, as they say in the trading standards world, ‘fit for purpose’ and at £20, reasonably priced.

Your fine for not having one when you next use a cell phone in the car could be 10 quid dearer than that anyway!

Besides which, it keeps my phone charged, which is something that I’m notorious at forgetting to do.

I'm still struggling with that 'personal hands-free privacy' - perhaps it's something we should suggest to Anne Summers shops?
 

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