Cardo PTS00101 - PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset - Black, Dual 2 Pack

Bottom line: It works as advertised and I'm about to buy a 2nd. Anyone expecting dolby surround sound or 12 speaker car audio quality... doesn't understand acoustics and the environment this operates in. Do I wish it was more robust sounding audio, yes. But it is a good balance of on the road entertainment and still being able to track what's happening in your environment, YES! Longer Version: Ok, so I've had this and used it on my daily commute for about 4 months now. So far I've never run out of battery, but I've not been on a ride longer than 4 hours yet. However, I've gone 2 week or so without charging it with roughly 30-40 min round trip runs. Still, not the advertised lifespan tested, but again no issues. I've only paired up with someone once. Worked without any headache. I bought mainly for audio navigation and music. Both have worked pretty flawlessly. Noise cancelling is quite good. I've had trouble with people hearing me on a call when testing it in my apartment (I think it was too quiet in my apartment for the noise filtering to understand lol). But it seems to work great when on my bike. At 80 mph, they can still hear me as well as 25mph. At pretty much any speed, I'm told that the volume coming through on the call is low, but clear. I haven't discovered a setting that seems to impact that. It's not ideal, but it does allow me to flawlessly answer or make calls if necessary without stopping or any fumbling or fuss. Practice using the button to hang up on a call. I haven't discovered a voice command to hang up and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure that you had to press a button to end the call. Music - the big one. Look, if you want to blast your music in your ear while riding, I'd humbly suggest reconsider the safety of that. But that's also what headphones are for. Having said that, I'm a music guy and I want to have tunes rolling while I ride. This is my first helmet system. So I can't compare it to anything else, but I am an audiophile and if you heard how strong, full, balanced, and clear my system is in my car, you'd know I spend a lot of time and effort getting it right. This system just works. I actually think it sounds very good. For those that claim they can't hear it or it's unimpressive, I don't know what you were expecting from a small scale speaker competing with 85-100db from road, engine, and wind noise in even the better helmets. But 2 things have made a big difference for me. Make sure your volume level on your phone is turned up pretty much all the way. This seems to have a very real impact to the volume range of the system for me. Also, to protect my ears, I ride with some Alpine riding ear plugs in that claim they filter out the white noise and spare reduce the strain on your ears. I think they do that well and a great investment. I also find that I can actually hear my music much better when I wearing those plugs than without and at a greater range of volume levels. I'm about to purchase my second unit for my second helmet. I have a HJC RPHA 11 and a RPHA 90. One for short runs and imo improved safety. The other is for the longer hauls I've started running. So far this has been running in the 11 with the full face mic. I'll install on the 90 with the modula mic and update if I find a noticeable performance difference. It might help that I'm also on a semi quiet bike (2018 Versys 650) without burning cash on any aftermarket pipe. I also have an aftermarket windshield that is very effective. But even when I have that dropped down for some airflow I don't notice much, if any drop off in hearing my music. Weirdly, I feel like podcasts also tend to come through more clearly. But you have fewer audio waves fighting the environment to reach your ears. So to me I suppose that makes sense. I spent the first 30 years of my life paycheck to paycheck. So even with the resources now to buy premium products, I can't shake the habit of bang for buck buying. I think this is a great bang for buck if it fits your budget and if comms and audio while you ride are important to you. If there are better options, I'd say this is at very least not a wrong choice.

2-month update on my experience with this helmet communicator. This unit is perfect, just get it and be done. After 2 months and 2,000 miles of riding with the Cardo Packtalk Special Edition, I have nothing but HIGH PRAISE for this unit when used with 3M PELTOR E-A-R buds Noise Isolating Headphones EARbud2600N (also on Amazon) . When I bought this Cardo unit, I felt it was wickedly expensive for what it was, but now I'm so glad to have chosen it. In my view, the expense was completely worth it - having natural voice control of the unit (and my phone) is amazing and works very well for me. Audio quality on both ends of phone calls is very good. I have also been able to pair and communicate with other bluetooth helmet units, and have not had any opportunity yet to try pairing with DMC units. Hot Tip: When used with an iPhone, using Siri and constructing smart Shortcuts, it is possible to control your device by voice in ways that would otherwise be difficult to do while riding with protective gear on, such as to simply switch from your ride tracking app to the Cardo app. With this Cardo unit and the iPhone Shortcut app, there is no need to pull over and remove gear just to do that super-simple action. Original Review Content: Tons of utility in this product - easy to install, configure and use. Great app, excellent and very easy to use voice control. Kind of cool that it also receives FM radio stations. Where it fails for me is due only to the protective gear that I use when I ride, which is with a full-face helmet and hearing protectors, which makes it very hard for me to hear streamed music using the helmet speakers. A giant selling point for this particular product are the included 45mm “JBL speakers”…and they’re completely and utterly useless to me. HOWEVER, those fancy helmet speakers connect to the unit using a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so removing the helmet speakers and plugging in a pair of 3M Peltor E-A-R headphones (20-30dB NRR) makes the system work perfectly for me. The base mount is very solid and holds the unit securely in place on the helmet. It is easy for me to recommend this unit, with the one caveat that if you are also wearing hearing protection, you likely will need to separately purchase some wired hearing protection earbuds to connect to the unit in order to hear the audio while driving. Ride for the slide, wear your gear!

So my husband and I finally had the time to ourselves and went for a run. We are not techie at all. We watch some you tube videos to install the talk pack bold duo into our helmets. The video was excellent too. Showed all kinds of helmet. I charged the packs overnight. Took us about 30 mins to install in the helmet. Am very glad we bought the jbl. The sound was crystal clear and the bass did come through fine. Yes was very pricey but So worth it. I figureD if you’re going on a couple to a few hour cruise and you’re sightseeing and going places you’ve never been before you’ll want to talk to your spouse or partner on some cool things you see like we do. We are about to hit 50 so going for a cruise and able to listen to our music without having to fumble with your cell phone is a plus. I had my purse inside our saddle bag and was able to listen to the music fine. So this is my take on it. With the duo you’re able to individually listen to your own music but still be connected to your partner thru the intercom. There is no wind noise whatsoever. Their white noise cancellation is excellent. You don’t hear any wind noise like you do on cell phones. Your partner will not hear your music or vice verse. The Bluetooth allows the connectivity to both the cardo talk pack and you stay connected to your smart phone at the same time. It was perfect. When you spoke the music soften a bit so you can hear each other and then the music would come back to original volume. I love the “hey cardo” function similar to Siri and bixby on smart phones. You can pick up phone calls with a touch. Increasing volume was cool. It’s a turning wheel on the talk pack. Now one con was the instructions showed I could share my music with my husband but was not able to do that yet. Still need to figure that out. I have a shoei helmet and my husband has a no name brand helmet that the front face lifts up. He used the half part mic. I used the full mic. You can’t even tell it’s inside the helmet. We both used the stick pad onto the outside of the helmet instead of the clip. The clip is a joke. All the helmets are thicker by design nowadays anyway. We both ended up using the adhesive to stick the talk pack clip onto the helmet. The video says to let the adhesive sit for 24 hours. We didn’t know that and we wanted to try it out. We still went out to try it. The adhesive as fine after 1 hour. This allows you to remove for charging. My shoei is very well insulated so the music And sound was great. I was totally impressed. I’ve had jbl before so wasn’t surprised but was still impressed. Never used an intercom before in a helmet. We went for a two hour ride and the battery didn’t die. I am very excited about The fact we can intercom with other riders and may be able to connect with them too to talk but that may be beyond our tech knowledge may have to trial and error it when opp comes. We may need to have same brand. Will have to read more into that. If you’re a hard core bike rider or a weekend road warrior it’s a must have if you’re with a partner. For individuals, the music alone to listen to on rides and be able to pick up calls and such is great. We also used a cell phone holder for motorcycles that held the phone in place by pinching the phone in the middle and has silicone bands that stretched around the corners of the phone for added security. We went along back roads over hills and some roads had some holes and unevenness and the phone didn’t budge. So overall it took us no longer than 30-40 mins to install, turn on, Bluetooth search for the talk pack, read on how to turn on music (minus the overnight charging) and we were out the door to go pick up some to go sushi for dinner. Charging Doesn’t take that long but I did it for the first time use. My husband didn’t have any music downloaded to his Samsung so at first we thought it didn’t work but we turned on his MixerBox list an app on his phone and he could hear his music fine. I love this product and it is so worth it. I hope this was helpful.

When I was looking at communication systems for riding, Sena is the name everyone automatically thinks of. After researching and watching a lot of reviews I came to the consensus that Sena is all about the name and not much else. Cardo is that company that spends money on a good product and not so much product advertisement. It was very easy to install, the speakers are good sounding (JBL) with some light to moderate bass. My only concern is how long the speakers will last as I will wear (foam) ear plugs when I know I'm doing highway riding and the volume ends up being 90-100%. Other than that, still plenty loud weather I have plugs in or not and voice is nice and clear. My buddies and I all wear full face helmets and any wind or road noise is non-existent with our face shields up or down. The app is pretty easy to use, software updates are super easy, the FM radio works wonderfully. This might be an issue with my phone but OK Google is hit or miss, I have to have it play something otherwise I never know if it actually activated it or not (the audio mutes when it activates, if there is a tone that plays I can't hear it). The built in voice commands work every time, I never touch the unit itself, only to power on/off. This unit does support Spotify as opposed to the built in media player that plays local files on your phone, but I find it's easier to just open Spotify and start playback from my phone rather than using the voice command as the voice command seems to take a while if the Spotify player notification has gone away. This very well could be a limitation with Android because if the player notification is still in my notification shade playback is instant. Battery life has been awesome, I haven't actually measured it, but what's claimed has to be pretty close to actual. Just guessing I'd say I get a good 10 hours of battery life. To put it this way, it's never died on me yet and I'm not the best about remembering to charge it when it gets low. It does charge pretty quick if you forget and got 10-15 minutes to put some juice in before you go out on a ride. If your bike is setup for a 12v car charger, it does support use and charge, I think the instructions say it'll power off when plugged in, just power it back on and it'll still charge. I ordered the two pack and gave one to a buddy and his had an issue with the right speaker not working, Cardo sent him a new mount for free and that fixed his issue. The mesh networking is what drew me into this particular model and it works really well. Pairing is super easy when done in the app. Only complaint and this might be by design is if I ride over or a buddy rides to my place, whoever had their unit on prior has to power off and back on to connect to the other unit(s). BUT once communication is established and someone hits or red or whatever and disconnects, they reconnect automatically when they return to range. Can't comment on the generic comm protocol that this also supports as I've never used it yet. Range is what I was expecting, pretty much line of sight, if you ride in mountain or twisty roads the mesh networking will be a godsend as riders will automatically reconnect to the group when they return to range if they happen to drop out. Overall an awesome product, don't bother wasting your money on a Sena, do it right the first time and just get a Cardo, you will NOT be disappointed. I have a Scorpion EXO-R710, one buddy has an HJC designed for HJC's re-branded Sena, and another buddy has an Icon Airflite and we all had no issues with installation. The HJC if I recall correctly required some very basic modifications to the outer shell for the mount to install, I can't remember what exactly it was, but was damage free to the helmet itself and simple to do. Might have been a small cut for the wires to tuck into the inner liner and use the sticky tape for the mount. All helmets feel just like they were before the installation of the unit. Would definitely recommend this product to anyone looking for a communication system for a multi-bike group ride, if looking for something for just rider and passenger communication, check out their cheaper products (those didn't have mesh networking at time of purchase).

Worked great, mostly use it for music - much better than messing with headphones or earbuds. Only used the rider-to-rider intercom a couple of times; didn’t like it because you can end up with a “chatty” rider that ruins the day. I like riding, not chatting.

After several years of use, I’ve never had any issues. The audio quality is excellent, and road noise is barely noticeable. People I talk to can’t even tell I’m riding a motorcycle, which says a lot about the noise cancellation. It’s a very reliable device and highly recommended for both daily rides and long trips.

The Cardo PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset is a top-of-the-line headset that offers excellent sound quality, features, and ease of use. It is perfect for motorcycle riders who want to be able to communicate with each other clearly and easily, even at high speeds. Here are just a few of the things that make the Cardo PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset so great: - Sound quality: The Cardo PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset delivers excellent sound quality, even in noisy environments. This is thanks to its advanced noise cancellation technology and its built-in JBL speakers. - Features: The Cardo PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset is packed with features, including: - DMC Dynamic Mesh Communication: This technology allows you to communicate with up to 15 riders in a five-mile range, even if they are not all connected to each other. -Natural voice operation: You can control the headset with your voice, so you don't have to take your hands off the handlebars. -Universal Bluetooth connectivity: The headset can connect to any Bluetooth device, such as your smartphone, GPS, or music player. -Parallel audio streaming: You can listen to music and communicate with other riders at the same time. - Ease of use: The Cardo PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset is very easy to use. The buttons are large and easy to find, even while riding. The headset is also very comfortable to wear, even for long periods of time. Overall, the Cardo PACKTALK Slim Motorcycle Bluetooth Communication System Headset is a great product for motorcycle riders who want to be able to communicate with each other clearly and easily. It offers excellent sound quality, features, and ease of use.

I don't actually know about that last bit, since literally everyone I meet up with here in FL uses Sena. It should be possible to bridge me in with the Sena network, but so far none of the other riders have been inclined to dork around with their units to try. So, I haven't actually gotten to use it to communicate with another rider. It's been great for taking/making phone calls, and listening to music/navigation. The sound is well balanced with bass mode on, and a few EQ tweaks on my phone. Once I start my bike, the bottom end gets masked a little by my M4 pipe. The volume is interesting, and of course depends on what you're listening to and how it was mastered. Bottom-heavy music will sound quieter, because the low end (which gets masked on the bike) eats up so much head room. Rock music, however is loud and clear. With the speed sensitivity on, the volume can get too loud on the interstate if I'm not wearing my earplugs. After commuting a couple of days I voice prompted a battery status, and Cardo reported "battery full". So far, I've been impressed with the battery life. The voice commands work well - I don't have to yell inside my full-face. When talking in a normal voice to my wife on the phone, she heard me just fine, and couldn't tell I was riding. Having said that, you don't hear yourself in the headset while making a phone call, so at first it's hard to judge how loudly you need to speak (no need to yell). I haven't experienced a single issue with it so far, and it is such a clean, discreet install. I'm happy with my choice, even if I'm the only dork in 3 states not using Sena, lol.