Costar Bluestar 2010 Is Much Improved

[EZ_]

I posted this in the product review section, but I wanted to post it here just in case some of yall never scroll down that far....sorry in advance, mods. I've gotten a lot of questions from people about this product and I figured I'd relay my experiences.

 

I purchased CoStar's first unit for GM class II vehicles last december, and unpluged it after a week. The phone would arbitrarily disconnect, call quality was awful for the people I was talking to, and there was a 10-15 second delay in hookup on incoming calls.

 

So I emailed Joe over at Costar and told him I wanted a replacement thinking maybe my particular unit was defective, as I've heard some very good reviews on these things. Joe handled everything quickly and professionally, and offered to warranty it out and send me their new and improved Bluestar 2010 unit.

 

The unit has a lot of upgrades and is lightyears beyond that zip tied motorola bluetooth module that I bought back in December. It's now fully enclosed in a black rectangular box, and they've added a mini USB port for hooking up to the computer to apply updates and change settings. I've been told that A2DP compatibility (streaming audio through bluetooth) is imminent, and will be applied via a USB update when its available. This is going to be a huge bonus, because I can stop using my motorola t505 unit to stream music and pandora through an FM channel via the T505's FM modulator. The T505 is a great product and I'd reccomend it to anyone that doesn't want to spend the money on a bluestar or travels a lot, but its kind of a PITA to have to switch over to FM when a call comes in, and sometimes the signal can get a bit choppy. All minor complaints really, it works great.

 

I've read a lot of complaints about road noise and microphone quality for the person on the other end, and really this is easily fixed in about a minute. Plug the unit into your computer and open the settings folder. You can adjust the microphone gain (as well as a lot of other stuff) and it immediately fixes the echo and road noise issues. I found that for my 03 Yukon -12 is the magic number after testing it out on different settings. After I tweaked the mic gain I have had zero problems with the unit, people can hear me loud and clear, and I can hear them perfectly through the onstar channel. The bluestar immediately mutes your music and switches over to phone mode, whereas the old unit would take upwards of 10 seconds to redirect the call audio through the speakers (sometimes it would never get there).

 

All in all, this is an excellent solution for those of us that don't have factory bluetooth. I'd say the call quality rivals my friend's factory bluetooth in his Mercedes, and the cost is much less than paying for the nav/bluetooth package from a dealership. Good stuff.

[rockcrusherrevived]

I posted this in the product review section, but I wanted to post it here just in case some of yall never scroll down that far....sorry in advance, mods. I've gotten a lot of questions from people about this product and I figured I'd relay my experiences.

 

I purchased CoStar's first unit for GM class II vehicles last december, and unpluged it after a week. The phone would arbitrarily disconnect, call quality was awful for the people I was talking to, and there was a 10-15 second delay in hookup on incoming calls.

 

So I emailed Joe over at Costar and told him I wanted a replacement thinking maybe my particular unit was defective, as I've heard some very good reviews on these things. Joe handled everything quickly and professionally, and offered to warranty it out and send me their new and improved Bluestar 2010 unit.

 

The unit has a lot of upgrades and is lightyears beyond that zip tied motorola bluetooth module that I bought back in December. It's now fully enclosed in a black rectangular box, and they've added a mini USB port for hooking up to the computer to apply updates and change settings. I've been told that A2DP compatibility (streaming audio through bluetooth) is imminent, and will be applied via a USB update when its available. This is going to be a huge bonus, because I can stop using my motorola t505 unit to stream music and pandora through an FM channel via the T505's FM modulator. The T505 is a great product and I'd reccomend it to anyone that doesn't want to spend the money on a bluestar or travels a lot, but its kind of a PITA to have to switch over to FM when a call comes in, and sometimes the signal can get a bit choppy. All minor complaints really, it works great.

 

I've read a lot of complaints about road noise and microphone quality for the person on the other end, and really this is easily fixed in about a minute. Plug the unit into your computer and open the settings folder. You can adjust the microphone gain (as well as a lot of other stuff) and it immediately fixes the echo and road noise issues. I found that for my 03 Yukon -12 is the magic number after testing it out on different settings. After I tweaked the mic gain I have had zero problems with the unit, people can hear me loud and clear, and I can hear them perfectly through the onstar channel. The bluestar immediately mutes your music and switches over to phone mode, whereas the old unit would take upwards of 10 seconds to redirect the call audio through the speakers (sometimes it would never get there).

 

All in all, this is an excellent solution for those of us that don't have factory bluetooth. I'd say the call quality rivals my friend's factory bluetooth in his Mercedes, and the cost is much less than paying for the nav/bluetooth package from a dealership. Good stuff.

 

bluestar is back ordered right now Joe Costar emailed me to say he should be shipping by November this year so i will get one then

[Raymond Lowe]

I sent my old Bluestar unit (Motorola 850 zip-tied version) back to Costar in Febuary for repair/replacement. Still haven't received a replacement some 7 months later despite a number of e-mails. I know they're sorting through issues but I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever see anything from them.

[electricchiken7]

This is probably the way I will end up going. Thanks for the reveiw.

[Maxbaby]

Some time ago, I thought there was a post on how to install the bluestar unit with pictures, but I can't find it anywere. Was there such a writeup and if so, does anyone still have it? I have just ordered the unit for my 2004 Tahoe.