I need to be able to make hands free calls in the car and currently use a standard pair of in ear ‘phones. I’ve had a look about and there are a few options:

Bluetooth headset.
Add on bluetooth dongle to be plugged into the current stereo.
New stereo including built in bluetooth.

I’d like to be able to hear the call through the car speakers, and if I change the stereo I don’t want to lose the functionality whereby I can control the stereo from the steering wheel. It’s all new to me – any pointers/ideas/suggestions?

Cheers
TS

A Parrot seems to be a preferred option – a stand-alone unit that links with your existing radio.

Never tried one myself but people I know that have seem to be happy with them.

and if I change the stereo I don’t want to lose the functionality whereby I can control the stereo from the steering wheel.

That is going to be a function specific to the stereo, not any telephone add-on. Ie, the new stereo either supports your car’s steering wheel functions or doesn’t.

A parrot only interrupts the iso block from the radio to the speakers in your car. Steering wheel remotes link in through a separate output on the radio. They are the best hands free unit that you can get and as you can guess I swear by mine. By the time that youve driven past two police cars while on your phone via the parrot kit it has paid for itself in my eyes when you take into account the 3 point penalty and £60 fine each time.

Get a parrot kit wired into the cats audio. Easily the best solution, used one for years now and they ate indispensable when you have tried one.

An alternative to the the Parrot, our Golf came with a Bury CC9060 already installed which works flawlessly.

You could also go down the route of a Dension gateway with bluetooth adapter which would give hardwired ipod/iphone/mp3 player music and bluetooth phone inetgration.

Another Parrot user here and I have been very happy with it 🙂

My installer swears by the Bury kits but i get him to fit Parrots because thats what i have used for years.

The latest parrot kits have full blue tooth and ipod /usb connection so you can then play your music through it. When you get this one (forget the model) the controller will also work your Ipod controls. Cheaper than some of the Ipod connectors we get supplied from merc

I used to have a bluetooth headphone thing, which was ok but not through the stereo system.

Current car came with built in bluetooth/steering wheel thingy. Very handy if you’ll excuse the pun

I used to use a parrot kit, easy to use, quality maybe variable from kit to kit though, wife had same type of kit in her car and sound quality for people listening to her was not brilliant at all, lots of back ground noise, even though she had the “quieter” car, a Citroen Picasso, whilst my kit was fitted into a old Nissan terrano.

Or replace your stereo with a unit that does Bluetooth calling built in.

We’ve got a Blaupunkt one bought a few years back for iPod compatibility. Works really well with an iPhone and BT audio streaming (from an iPhone or most other smartphones) is really convenient. Phone quality is adequate rather than great.

Parrot sound quality is meant to be good. They do some systems of their own and a few Pioneer sets have parrot tech built in (Pioneer-deh-6200bt)