Review on Sena Motorcycle Bluetooth Headset Communication System: Enhancing Rider Connectivity and Safety by Casey Yuh

Please understand that I am a Sena fan. So I am inclined to wish them every success. I love my SMH-10 and my Sena GoPro bluetooth backpack. I have covered tens of thousands of accident-free kilometers with my partner (separate bikes), with my wife (passenger) and alone with the SMH-10 and a GoPro backpack. But the 50S is complete bullshit. I'm a total gadget addict, techie and computer nerd. Call me whatever you want, but everyone I know calls me for tech support. I can make things work. This thing doesn't work. I swear they do that in the Dilbert comics. Pros: The extra bass in the speakers makes it easier to listen to podcasts at slightly faster speeds than the SMH-10 (unfortunately, this makes the music muddy and inaudible at much slower speeds than the SMH). -10).- Added bass in speakers make Bluetooth intercom more audible than SMH-10.- Can listen to music in network mode. Sorry, they preferred form to function). All it picks up is your head moving loudly inside your helmet. You can barely hear people screaming right next to you, and only if they're to your left (where the mic is said to be). - Listening to music when connected via Bluetooth Intercom (Sena calls it Bluetooth Intercom Audio Multitasking) DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. You just get very choppy music. - Smart volume control DOES NOT WORK AT ALL. I don't have any more details, it just doesn't help. Maybe it does after a firmware update or something? - Listening to music with Mesh turned on (Sena calls it Mesh Intercom Audio Multitasking) just sort of works, but not in the way you want it to. When transmitting or receiving, you can mute (reduce) or unmute the music, but you can't choose how much it's muted. You can only choose the sensitivity of your decision to duck. It's total blast or subtle but nothing in between. Bluetooth intercom connections become very poor and very short when Mesh is enabled. You also get the "popcorn" sound that the 20 Series is so notorious for, even at very close range. The app is garbage. Most of the time I can't connect my headset even though the headset is connected to my phone and music is playing. Most of the terms don't make sense, so it's hard to do and even harder to undo. The equalizer is a BIG LIE. There are three presets (Bass Boost, Mid Boost and Treble Boost) and disabled. It's hardly a sound preference, it's absolutely no EQ. - The "WiFi" charging cable is almost impossible to set up, and when it can finally connect to your wifi, it tells you it's broken. It took me at least 10 attempts to connect the app to the cable. After that, it took at least 30 tries before I finally connected it to my home WiFi. Bluetooth intercom distance with Mesh enabled was around 250-300 meters (or yards if you like, they're about the same in that range). On a straight road with line of sight through it was about 400m with the grid off. The Seine claim of 1600m is dead FALSE. Even 200m away, when I saw my friend's head flying over the hilltop, we lost contact on the intercom. The SMH-10 works much, much better. The battery life is terrible. From a full charge while listening to music and with the power on, I dropped to 64% in about an hour and 15 minutes (30 miles). Voice control is a sadistic joke. At best, it replaces some (not all) of the simple one-click functions. All you really need for voice control is a few menus deep in the Sena 50 app. CONS that can't even be fixed with a firmware update: - This thing's ergonomics are COMING! I wear unlined suede gloves and this thing is almost impossible to use. God help you if you drive a snowmobile. You can't even find the jog wheel, let alone use it. If you found it by accident, you have already turned or pressed it. The only thing I could reliably and predictably do was run my thumb over the edge, but it's like manipulating the SMH-10's jog wheel, the opposite of manipulating because you're turning it down, to increase the volume, and all the way up. add it The phone button is lower compared to the SMH-10, so you have to turn your hand a lot to operate it. This was REAL PEET as almost every time I found myself having to connect to the app to access a setting that should have been accessible via voice command. - Cannot find the Ambient Mode button. This can be a moot point since, as I said, "Ambient Mode" doesn't work at all. The "Mesh" button is hard to find, but possible. You can't really feel it, but you can feel the ridge behind it, and you know it's right in front of the ridge, so you can make it work faster than the other keys. The mesh antenna cannot be tuned. lift with gloves. CONCLUSION: Dear Sena, I really wanted you to win the intercom war. Motorcycles are the reward for our daily work. That's what we work for. That's what we live for. But it is not easy. It's not even safe. The SMH-10 has achieved the almost impossible. It made the bike better. This increased convenience, but did not add complexity. It added fun, but it didn't add danger. It made communication easier. This minimized our time with our hands on the wheel and we never had to take our eyes off the road. The Sena 20 sucked and you knew it. I was willing to give you a pass because I figured it must just be growing pains, a sophomore misstep. Trying to add such features failed and sounded like popcorn. Then you made the 30 series. The answer to cardo devices that were pushed out too soon. I also gave up because the mesh network blinded us both and needed you to say something. As we all now know, Mesh 2.0 in Episode 30 would have probably killed Cardo three years ago. Today it is hardly worth mentioning in front of a whole "swarm" of speakers. But now, last year, give us the 50 series, which is obviously just a 30 series with speakers almost as good as the 10 series, and a firmware update that we would have done two years ago must. They made it difficult to use and screwed up features that we really appreciate. The SMH-10 was so good that it won me over on four things. It convinced me that you are interested in motorcycles. That convinced me that you care about the wishes of your customers. That convinced me that you want to make a product that works. And it convinced me that you can even be a motorcyclist. The Sena 50S only convinced me in two things. That convinced me that the SMH-10 was a fluke and not only are you not a motorcyclist but you don't even know any motorcyclists who could ask you to try this thing before you put it on the market. .