Nokia Speakerphone HF-300 Review

Several months ago we told you about the Nokia Speakerphone HF-200. This is another Bluetooth hands-free kit for cars that we do consider handy, despite we had several gripes about it. Now let´s find out if Nokia has done better with the similar, but higher-range product, the Nokia Speakerphone HF-300.

As a whole, there aren´t many differences between the HF-200 and HF-300. Mounting it in your car takes just a few seconds. The only things you need to do is hang it onto your car's sun visor, set the clip and use the boxed band that fixes the device really tight into place, so any road bumps you might run into won´t give you any trouble. We have a gripe here though. You have to decide whether to pull down your car's sun visor or not and then stick to your choice, because otherwise you may end up with the speaker turned against the windscreen, which means you might face certain troubles using it later.

There are four buttons on the body of the HF-300, which unlike the ones on the HF-200 are backlit and hence, fairly easy to see in the dark. You may be wondering what you would need four buttons for. The one on the left hand side powers the device, while pressing it during calls turns on and off the microphone. The volume control keys are located on the front side of the HF-300, but this is not the only function they feature. They also light up in blue when you get your phone connected to the unit, notifying you the hands-free is all set and ready. The button in between is more universal. If someone´s calling you, you can press it once to answer or twice to reject the incoming call and in case you are talking to someone at the same time, pressing it is equivalent to hanging up. The button also has several other functions as well, like redial and voice dialing (if supported by your phone).




Now, it´s time we talk about the sound quality. We were able to hear what we were told while driving at 35 mph with the side window open wide, although crackling became an issue with the device going at full blast. Fortunately, this didn’t seem to affect the quality badly. Things turned out to be much worse on the other end and people complained they had lost us on several occasions. Unfortunately, this issue was present even in more quiet surroundings. Therefore, we cannot recommend the HF-300, so you better go for the cheaper HF-200.




According to the manufacturer, the HF-300 should be able to provide about 20 hrs of continuous talk time and 240 hrs (10 days) in standby. Fortunately, Nokia has allowed for easily distractible people like us that tend to forget different gadgets turned on, so the device powers off on having lost connection to the cell phone for more than 5 minutes, meaning you won´t have to think about turning it off if you need to leave your car for several hours. Just get off and the Nokia Speakerphone HF-300 will switch to sleep mode in several minutes.

As a whole, the HF-300 is quite handy to use and mounting it onto a car's sun visor is fast and easy. Unfortunately, we are not satisfied with the call quality it delivers, so we think you´d better off opting for the cheaper HF-200.