Scala Q2

[me&mybmw]

I've bought the Scala Q2 and going to mount them on a pair of Motorrad "Helm Sport" helmets. Has anybody else run into any issues with this combination?

[SuperG]

I have this set (Q2 duo)and here is my take on it.

 

volume is very good even with earplugs in.

mounting it to the helmet is somewhat easy.

the duo was paired from the factory.

It pairs with other bluetooth easy.

 

rider to passenger communication works well but unit falls asleep (autoshutoff) easy and sometimes hard to wake up with VOX, manual press on the button wakes up the unit, but not optimal.

 

Range is very good considering the size of the unit with no visible antenna. my estimate would be 1/2 mile to 3/4 miles.

 

FM radio is useless unless you are near a transmitter tower. even so navigating fm radio channels is a hassle.

 

microphone boom loose its stiffness after awhile and it will creep downward on its own weight unless secured to the helmet chin base.

 

use on long rides:

I used this twice on a 500 day trips with a buddy.

once he rode a vstrom650 lots of wind noise and the mic(VOX) never auto shut off, meaning i was hearing his mic/wind noise constantly. Resulted in short battery life about 3 hours or so.

 

If noise is not an issue ( unit is not on all the time) no more than 4 hours of on time.

 

unit can not be used when battery is recharging.

 

second time he was on a glodwing and the noise issue disappeared.

 

Now we had a second problem. The unit falls a sleep (auto-shut off) randomly at different time intervals, often it does not wake up unless you yell as loud as you can. sometime it shutoff(sleep) as we were talking. there is no adjustment for for mic sensitivity. - it is automatic.

 

playing music through bluetooth or direct mp3 connect is ok but because of speaker quality the sound is horrible, all mid tones, no high or low freq sounds. basically like music coming from a cardboard box.

 

For speech bike to bike communication, mid tones are great and clear and the unit works well.

 

This would be a great unit/setup for two guys cruising through the town on beer runs or what not.

 

I am removing mine and installing an autocom this weekend.

 

selling mine if anyone wants it. (pair)

 

 

I would give it a 2.5 star rating.

 

[mackerman]

Our experience with the Q2:

 

Great unit overall for bike to bike intercom use. My wife (riding her hot red NT650 "LadyHawk) and I use them every time we ride and absolutely love the ability to talk between one another.

 

We only use ours in the open mike mode - we've tried the Vox circuit and although it works, the delay in transmitting is unacceptable for normal (e.g. random thoughts) conversation.

 

The battery life is fair, about 5 hours or so. An important note here.,..both of our units began to run short on battery life, the first unit at 11 months, the second at 14 months. Cardo replaced both under warranty, even though the second unit was past the warranty period. Be sure to test the battery life before the warranty period runs out so you don't get caught with a pair of unusable batteries.

 

I have paired the Cardo Q2 with my cell phone and with my GPS without any problem and it works very well. The only caveat is that when using the Q2 in the open mike configuration, the GPS input will turn off the intercom circuit for 30 seconds minimum whenever it receives the audio stream from the GPS. Even if the audio from the GPS is only 5 seconds long, the audio drops out for 30 seconds. For us, this turned out to be a real problem, as Joyce would either end up talking into a dead mike, or I would need to tell her about an upcoming turn and had to wait for the Q2s to reconnect.

 

We've enjoyed the units and don't regret the $$ spent at all. That said, I am seriously looking at the Sena intercom system to replace the Cardo units.