Jabra SP5050

As Jabra is one of the world's most well-known Bluetooth headset manufacturers, it only made sense that the company would leap headfirst into the world of Bluetooth speakerphones. In fact, it was one of the first out the gate with the Jabra SP5050, which was released a couple years ago but has regained new popularity thanks to the hands-free cell phone laws sweeping the nation recently. As it was one of the first, the SP5050 is pretty basic as far as features and functionality go, which is fine by us since that keeps its price low as well. The Jabra SP5050 has decent sound, and is available for around $60.

The Jabra SP5050 is one of the slimmest speakerphones we've seen, measuring 2.3 inches wide by 4.9 inches long by 0.4 inch thick. It's also quite lightweight, only weighing about 2.64 ounces. It is mostly black with a silver trim, and has a simple business-like appearance. There's a large speaker grille on the front, while the volume buttons are on the left and right side. At the very top is an LED display with four icon indicators for power, Bluetooth connectivity, call status, and battery strength. If you're wondering where the multifunction button is, it's actually the entire top half of the front surface, right under the Jabra logo. We found all buttons extremely easy to find and press. The charger jack is on the right spine, and a large metal clip lies on the back. This clip can be easily attached to a car's sun visor.

We paired the Jabra SP5050 with the RIM BlackBerry Pearl pretty easily, since it automatically goes into pairing mode the first time it powers up. Call quality was quite decent. We had no problems hearing our callers, and vice versa. The SP5050 has DSP (digital signal processing) that helps with reducing background noise, which is quite helpful here. However, occasionally callers sounded quite soft even though we had the volume cranked up. This could be phone-dependent, so you might want to try it out with your phone to see if you experience the same volume issues.

Features include typical answering, ending, and rejecting calls, plus it supports last number redial, call mute, voice dialing, and a night driving mode - this shuts off the LED lights at night so your eyes don't get distracted. You also have the ability to transfer calls from the phone to the speakerphone and vice versa.

The Jabra SP5050 only comes with an in-car charger and no AC adapter. That's OK with us, since you'll be using this in your car anyway, but it would've been nice to have an AC option included. It has a rated talk time of 12 hours and a standby time of 8.3 days.

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