Cardo Freecom 2 Or 2+

I bought a Cardo pack talk slim for the wife's crimbo. She wanted it so she could speak to our daughter on the back of her Bonny. We have finally...got it to work, although she is having trouble getting it to "voice activate", as is my daughter, mind you she is only nine.

I had to carve out spaces for the headphones so they would fit into the wee ones' helmet, the wife's and mine already had recesses to fit the quite large speakers. The mic fits in with velcro patches placed under the liner, the mic has a small boom and it can fowl helmets like ours that have flip up fronts so be careful there. The units themselves are very small, the charger goes on the back and has a "blade" type attachment to slide it under the plastic shell of the helmet.

The controller goes on the side but be careful if you have sun visor or other levers on the side as it can foul those as well. It took about 15 mins to fit it all and takes some fiddling to get the placement right, especially the speakers. I have a speed hump on my jacket for the Ducati and when I extend my neck to look up it butts up against my helmet so, although I have not actually used it on my helmet I surmise that if I did, the battery pack would case significant interference with head movement.

I have to say that overall I'm not that impressed. I got mine from Infinity in Glasgow, £400 less my £40 voucher; its an expensive beast for what it is. I usually ride with my 10 year old I Pod and a set of ear buds and that does me; clean and simple. As far as talking to other folks (particularly the wife!) I can live without that!

Horses for courses though. There are several good You tube tutorials on the system should you need them.

 

I have tried several brands in the past (Interphone, Midland) and found out that Cardo's (I've got two Slim units) work excellently. It's the first time I can actually work a unit without my fingers, even with my harsh greek-english accent (although it forces me to try harder to sound british/american). I had a few minor niggles that were fixed with firmware updates and a unit which had a broken 3.5mm female plug (the reason why I wanted the unit in order to attach my custom in ear headphones). I got excellent response and service, everytime I used their support although I hear mixed reviews about it. My experience has been absolutely great.

P.S. I have also successfully paired them with non Cardo units (Interphone) and the connectivity was great. Cannot comment on large distances, as I have not tried it in the woods.

 

I think Cardo have dropped the 1,2,4 now and are all the plus version now so what you’ve found is probably old stock?

If you just want to speak to your pillion then you could just get the 1+ unit the only upgrade of the 2+ is that you can’t talk to another rider within 500m (probably less in reality). If you move up to the 4+ then you can talk to 3 other riders, speakers are upgraded to JBL and voice activation is available so you can ask it to skip tracks, call a number, or use Siri/Google assist etc, then the Bold and slim move on to Mesh connection for up to 15 riders. They now do a Bold Dark which has slightly bigger speakers, an extra year warranty and it’s black.

I had the packtalk slim unit, although not officially for my Shoei, it did fit, the only thing was it packed up the first time it got wet (it’s supposed to be waterproof). Tbh Amazon were great, just under a year old they just refunded my money, no quibbles.

So I went to infinity and bought a Bold to replace it. My mates got one too and works well for us chatting to each other. I bought the mrs a 1+ as when she’s on the back she’s only going to be talking to me so no need to buy her a higher spec model. Works fine and and is nice and clear even at speed but it’s not an always on system, so it tends to miss the first word when we are talking to each other.

 

Have you tried changing the language setting to “proper” English, rather than American English? I found I had to speak with a southern states American twang to get it to understand me until I changed the unit to UK English.

 

Not saying that they aren't crap or that you've set them up wrong but it's imperative for performance above the speeds that you're talking about to have the speakers properly aligned with, and close to, your ears otherwise wind noise takes over exponentially as speed increases.

Many years ago I bought an Autocom system after a few recommendations from members of the VFR and UKGSer forums. I was disappointed in the same way you appear to be until I read the comprehensive instructions that came with it. Positioning the speakers so that their centres were aligned with my ear canals and also packed out to lightly brush my ears, this took some experimentation and jerry rigging with foam and Velcro stacks. Having done that everything changed in terms of being able to hear at speed. Whilst some fidelity is lost at 70+ GPS and intercom were still audible up to three figures with decent foam high SNR earplugs in.

I have applied the same theory to my Sena BT intercoms with similar results. Having the screen raised to the high position on the Multistrada when on the motorway/autoroute makes a significant difference too.

 

When I connect with Cardo Connect and try to change the language, I get the message "*Natural voice operation not supported". How do you change it?

 

Yes, I get that message when I try.

 

I stuck with my Cardo G9X system. I never had any issue with them and they work perfectly with iPhone 10 and any satnav I want. I have multiple bases and swap the unit itself between different helmets.