Holding a cell phone while driving has become a non-no in many places. While hands free devices to not eliminate the distractibility of speaking on the phone while operating a motor vehicle, they are known to reduce the risk measurably. When you tire of earpieces, a smart and affordable next move would be to the Samsung HF1000.
Small earpieces and large hands free devices have flooded the Bluetooth market for years. Especially since many states have enacted legislation prohibiting the use of a cell phone while operating a vehicle without one. After a plethora of earpieces that fall out at inconvenient moments and visor mounted sets that are heavy and cumbersome, Samsung has entered the market with this HF100. Compact, user friendly and accurate voice recognition in a small and reliable unit that holds a charge for an extended period of time.

To top it off, it costs about one half that of its best known competition, the BlueAnt hands free devices. This Samsung replaced my second BlueAnt SP-3, a nice machine costing nearly three times as much and one I found to be far less reliable and capable of receiving and sending good, clear voice both to and from the device itself.

So far as hands free, visor mounted units go, this Samsung HF100 is relatively petite 2 1/4″ X 4″ X 1/2″, it is simple to program (and can be program to operate with two different phones that are Bluetooth 2.1 compliant) and has a rather remarkable fully charged standby time for 3000 hours (turned on but not being used for about 25 days, and a measured talk time of up to about 30 hours.) You are not apt to find a headset that comes even close!)

The voice recognition capacity includes the ability to voice dial calls that are numbers listed in the phone’s memory, answering and responding to incoming calls as well as training the unit to respond to various other voice commands for operations like putting one call on hold while you answer another (Call Waiting.) When two devices are paired with the HF1000, it announces which one has an incoming call, and audibly confirms connections, call terminations and warns of the battery running low and needing recharging.

It allows for incoming calls to be accepted or rejected and I am told by those I use it to speak with while I am driving on the high way, that the noise management technology works better than any other device I have ever used ‘” and I have used many!

It clips easily to any overhead car visor and I bring more in once a week to recharge it. This is, perhaps, the one oversight in the design and packaging of the device. While it comes equipped with a car charger, it does not include an AC charging device. The good news is that AC chargers designed for other brands of handsfree units work perfectly well with this Samsung HF12000 so long as the electronic requirements are identical.

This means any charging device you use with it must be compliant with its rating of 3.7v and 700mA. Gladfully, these values are nearly ubiquitously standard on hands free vehicle devices.

There are realistically too many hands free devices on the market to try them all. I am delighted to report that this little Samsung HF1000 outperforms units I have used and tried costing considerably more that are two and three times the size and weight of this unit. It is a fine piece of increasingly necessary technology at a reasonable price.

Like all Bluetooth devices you can find in Holoplot, it has a range of up to 33 feet and like all of the better ones, when left on, automatically reconnects with a powered-on, paired phone once it is in that range.