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has recently released an interesting product in the realm of bluetooth stereo audio, the Callpod Drone.  Now at first casual glance, this average-sized dongle appears to be one of the many typical bluetooth adapters where you need to ensure a functional BT stack and requisite drivers and spend a fair amount of time waiting for everything to install or demand you supply a driver disk to satisfy its requirements, point to driver locations, update online and so on. Not so with this little silver and black gem!

The Drone come in a box roughly the size of a golf ball sleeve.  In the back of the packaging, cleverly tucked into a pocket in the exterior of the box, is the instruction manual.  It’s actually nice to get a package where a box cutter is not required to access the product!

Below: front of and back of packaging

Below: side view with cap on.  Note the silvery outer casing. It’s a sturdy metal alloy.

Above:  Showing sync button location.

To use, all an end-user need do is insert the Callpod Drone into a free USB port and initiate pairing with the bluetooth headphones of your choice and presto!, the dongle and headphones now transmit stereo sound. The Drone functions more in this capacity as a sound card that can be used simply by plugging it into your system, and it worked like a charm on the three Vista systems and one XP box I tested.  There’s no tedious driver installation routine, I merely plugged the device into my system, let the system recognize the USB device, and it immediately put itself into discovery/pairing  mode.

Below: Here you can see the Drone docked into one of my laptops, getting ready to pair with my headphones.

Below:  Once paired the dongle status indicator turns purple.

I then had only to put my headphones into pairing mode and within seconds I was receiving audio from my laptop.  It was that simple.  The minor one drawback of the Drone is that it sticks out a ways…I wish it had a swivel capability, like PCI wireless card antennas.  That was a small quibble with me for laptop usage.  For a desktop, at least for me, it is less of an issue as the Drone becomes unobtrusive plugged into the back of the PC or even into a USB hub.

It’s interesting to note that the pairing LED is purple, not green as shown in the box shot.  That aside, the  audio quality was very good given its bluetooth origin, and the headset I tested was a Jabra BT620S.  Range of the pairing was very good, and while the documentation stated a maximum transmission range of roughly 100m with compatible devices, I got around 5-10 meter range with my Jabra.  On occasion I might get an audio drop for a fraction of a second, but for me this was an infrequent occurrence, especially at closer ranges.  Another potentially useful feature of the Drone is that with a speaker headset, you could integrate the device with say, Skype.

The beauty of this dongle is that for Vista and XP it literally does indeed just work via plug and play for the purposes of audio pairing.  However, there are drivers available from Callpod that permit the dongle to function as a BT receiver for the system as well, and these can be found here.  When pairing as a standard bluetooth dongle in this mode, you must hold the sync button for at least 10 seconds.  Bear in mind though that getting the additional driver install defeats the simplicity of using the Drone as an audio device, but does permit more bluetooth functionality.

Dialog that comes up immediately prior to the update

IMHO, the Callpod Drone is an excellent piece of bluetooth hardware.  It’s simple to use, has a very good range and sound quality, and just plain works well.  While it’s true many newer systems come pre-equipped with bluetooth, you really can’t match the ease with which this works for a system without native bluetooth hardware.  As I mentioned earlier, it’s just plug, pair, and you’re off and running, or as easy as 1, 2, 3!

You can purchase the Callpod Drone directly from Callpod for $49.95.

Performance    

    *  100-meter (Class-1) range
    * VoIP and music streaming to any Bluetooth headset or stereo headphones
    * Automatically pairs with your headset or headphones
    * Seamlessly switch between music and VoIP calls
    * No software installation – Plug and Play
    * Optional software install for advanced functions such as data transfer
    * Upgradeable firmware

Compatibility

    * Works with all Bluetooth headsets and headphones
    * Supports all major VoIP platforms (i.e. Skype®)
    * Controls all PC music players (iTunes, Windows Media Player)
    * A2DP / AVRCP
    * Mac and PC compatible

Bryan Eley (40 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Bryan is a software tester and network admin for a small multimedia company that deals primarily with the network/PC technology sector, despite the fact that his background is actually in the biological sciences. His first PDA was a Palm m100 back in 2001 and has been fiddling with Pocket PCs and Smartphones for several years now. In 2008 he was a Software Judge for SmartPhone and PocketPC Magazine.