****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
I would give this a 4.5 star rating mainly due to the complicated button usage and having to have the helmet where the charging happens but I rounded up since that wasn't an option. I should start by saying that when we replaced our old Shoei helmets with new ones and we saw the integrated comms, we decided to try them out. Our previous 2 comm systems were Cardo ScalaRider PackTalk systems that are 6-7 years old, so that's where my comparisons to our "old comms" are from.Install was easy and the integration with the helmet is outstanding. The drawback to being integrated with the helmet is that we now have to keep our helmets in the house if we don't want the cold garage to drain the battery in the wintertime. We also don't have a lot of outlets in the garage near our helmet shelf, so we have to bring the helmets in to charge.Compared to our old comms, the buttons are harder to use, especially with gloves on. Both of us have accidently turned the Sena unit off and also somehow got stuck in FM radio mode. There is also a very fine line between tapping a button and holding it for 1 second. I'm sure practice will make things better but currently we're in that struggling phase of the learning curve.Battery -- Our old comms batteries didn't seem to last as long. We could use them for about 6-7 hours and then it seemed one or the other would start giving us low battery warnings. So far on the Sena, we haven't charged them yet and they are still displaying 70-100% full when we turn on the comms. I've gone for 3 3-hour+ rides and mine still shows high battery. I also like that you can see battery status, the old comms didn't have that feature.We are using a full faced helmet with fixed microphone and a neotec with a boom mic -- wind noise in the boom microphone is much less than our old comms.Pairing was easy between the 2 units. Unsure if we can easily add other people or other comms.Pairing was easy between my phone and the unit and/or an iPod and the unit.Volume hasn't been an issue with the Sena. The old comms would limit the music volume when 2+ paired devices were both on at the same time. Not only would it dim the volume while we were talking, but it would not allow us to turn the music up as much as we wanted when we weren't talking. Sena does not appear to have this limitation. We have both been turning up and down the volume as needed during the ride and whether we're talking or listening to our individual music doesn't seem to affect anything. As far as speaker quality, I don't really have an opinion -- the speakers provided are good enough for my use. I've never been someone who absolutely demands to hear every little nuance in the music they're listening to. For those people, I believe they can substitute other speakers if they don't find these adequate.
