Sudio Silhouette

Sporting a trendy gloss black and chrome finish, Sudio's compact Silhouette is a fairly standard but effective handsfree speakerphone. With decent clarity and good volume levels, it's an ideal option if you are looking for some wireless freedom in your car.

The Silhouette has been designed mainly for in-car use, but it can also be used at home or in the office. The detachable sun visor clip conveniently doubles as a small desk stand. The unit itself is sleek and slim (though quite long) and the gloss black finish and chrome highlight adds a nice touch.

Pairing is a simple process; simply turn the Silhouette on by holding down the large power button on the front, then hold down the volume button for four seconds to enter pairing mode. Once connected, operation is simple as the unit only has three buttons. Tapping the large answer/end call button answers and ends incoming and outgoing calls, while two volume buttons on either side handle in-call volume. The Silhouette can pair with up to five phones.

Bluetooth connectivity is solid; the range is a fairly standard 10 metres. Once connected, we found volume to be excellent, both for incoming and outgoing communication. The microphone was able to clearly pick up speech, and the speaker produced good, if not outstanding audio. We did find that voice isn't as crisp or clear as we would have liked though, despite the presence of Digital Signal Processor (DSP) technology. For best results, you'll have to close your car windows in order to create the quietest environment possible. Those with convertibles are best advised to look elsewhere, as the Silhouette isn't very kind to wind noise.

The Silhouette supports voice dialling (provided this is a feature of your phone) and last number redialling. You can also mute the microphone and transfer a call from the speaker phone to your handset or vice versa.

A small, LED display sits at the top of the unit and features four different icons to inform you of low battery, calls, Bluetooth connection and power. The Silhouette comes with both a USB charging cable and an in-car cigarette lighter charger, but no AC charger. Conveniently, an auto-off function means the unit powers off after an hour when not connected to a phone in order to preserve the battery life – rated at up to 12 hours talk time and 500 hours standby time.