Cobra MR F300, a marine Bluetooth cell mic!
What a good idea! Today Cobra is introducing its MR F300 BT Bluetooth handset, which seems carefully designed to make a cell phone work better, and live longer, on a boat. It’s a waterproof marine-style mic with noise-canceling technology on both the receive and transmit sides. It even has a Push-To-Talk (PTT) button like a VHF mic, but in this case it’s really a reverse mute button. In other words, you and your caller will hear no amplified boat noise unless you push the button (and you’ll still hear your caller even when the button is pushed). But if it’s quiet on the boat, there’s a dedicated button for hands-free speaker phone mode. In fact, the 4.5” tall mic even has soft keys able to call up a 50 number received call log and equal size phone book, and other features like 10 ring tones that can be individually assigned to regular callers {correction due to Cobra Web error, now also corrected: there’s just a choice of 10 tones, not selectable by caller}.
The diagram below shows how the F300 is wired via a waterproof helm outlet to your boat’s power supply and even to its stereo set, if you want. And it comes with a USB plug for easy firmware updates if needed (Bluetooth seems to be a pretty stable and pervasive wireless standard these days, but no doubt there will be updates to phones that might necessitate updates to the mic). I spoke with Cobra marine product manager Bill Boudreau about the F300 and was impressed with how much research the company did during its development. Plus I learned that Cobra is leveraging technology mastered while combining Bluetooth cellular with CB radio. And, yes, a similarly combined Bluetooth mic and VHF would be neat, but there’s the problem that VHF, unlike CB, is an official safety tool.
At any rate—as a guy who’s destroyed one cell phone with just a splash (I swear) of saltwater, and know of many similar fatalities—I surely welcome a way to put a phone safely away on a boat, not to mention improved performance at the helm. The F300, by the way, will purportedly ship in September, with an MSRP of $190. The other part of that puzzle is marine cell amplifiers and antennas, and I’ve been meaning to report on the latest from M-Tec, which has really upped its game since first mentioned here. Finally, I’m delighted that Karen and Jeff Siegel have just begun an in-depth series all about cell phones on boats at Mad Mariner. Part One is here.
Wish this wasn't wired.....might be worth it if I could use it at either helm station and take it boat to boat.