which is perfectly fine. The biggest NO GO for this headset, for me that is, is that it can't be combined with otoplastics, which is a MUST and to be honest should be a must for all riders.
But this is where we defere between US and EU also, we consider motorcycle gear as serious part of equipment - as a complete set jacket, pants, boots, gloves helmets, back protector (I use Dainessa DAIR Airbag).
So... Did my initial test run with this system. Some observations...
Fit & wear:
The earbuds - they are actually pretty comfortable. In fact, until I put on my helmet's neck curtain (I'll get into that more later), I couldn't tell they were in my ears. The unit comes with different sizes of ear tips and what they call EcoFit Ear Gels (the gels are designed to fill the Conchas - to reduce noise and provide a more secure fit). You only get 2 sizes of EcoFit Ear Gels - medium and large. If smaller is needed, then the shape of the earbud itself is supposed to fill the bill. After some trial and error, I ended up using the small ear tips and the large EcoFit Ear Gels (seems contradictory - but it works for me). The Ear Gels do help in both respects - especially making the earbuds fit more securely.
The neckband - I didn't even notice it was there when wearing it. It remained securely in place around my neck and disappeared from thought relatively quickly. The controls on the ends of the neckband work great with gloved hands.
The mic - it installed nicely on my half helmet... No huge module attached to the side...
The magnetic mic lead connector connects/snaps up to it's mate very easily. No problems there.
Performance:
Pairing/Compatibility - The unit pairs up and functions as expected with a cell phone. I also did some testing with a Binize CarPlay/Android Auto display unit. All paired and worked well - The Binize Unit, Motikom MPlus and my iPhone.
Music sound quality/volume levels - This unit sounds excellent just sitting in my chair here and listening to it. On the bike, some adjustments were necessary on the EQ to deal with the wind noise. The base had to be increased to compensate for wind etc, at speed. Music sounded fine to me. Volume was adequate. I was wearing a half helmet with speeds ranging up to 75 mph on the interstate. Obviously, that listening environment isn't going to be perfect - particularly at high speeds. So, you have to have reasonable expectations. Allowing for that, the sound quality and loudness was pretty decent - very listenable. They won't be blasting your ears off in any scenario.
Call quality - On my end the sound quality/loudness was very good even at interstate speeds. Call quality on my wife's end... She said she could hear wind noise, but I was clear enough and easily understandable even at interstate speeds. I had to fiddle with the mic position to figure out how close to my mouth to put it. She said it was better when it was a little farther away from my mouth. Things could get a little distorted when the mic was too close. One thing that I noted is that the unit didn't produce sidetone. This made it difficult to tell how loud to talk. My wife said I needed to try to talk in a more normal voice. I was talking too loudly. I don't know if the lack of sidetone is part of the Motikom design or if it was caused by the Binize CarPlay unit which was acting as a intermediary for my iPhone. I plan to look into this further by connecting the Motikom directly to the phone and seeing how it works. I'll probably call my other phone the next time I'm out riding and leave a few test voicemails so that I can hear for myself how it sounds.
Active noise cancellation - I generally wear Hearos (NRR 33). So, I was initially disappointed in the overall sound/noise levels. The Hearos may have skewed my expectations a bit. The Motikom has 5 levels of noise cancellation. The lowest level is no noise cancellation at all. It becomes apparent how much noise cancellation is occurring (quite a bit) when you essentially turn it off. The noise cancellation does beat down the wind noise quite a bit, but it doesn't totally get rid of it. I do hear other things more than when I wear the Hearos (which muffle all frequencies). I can certainly hear the music of the motor and the pipes more. Neither of which are much of an issue - in terms of hearing conservation on my bike. It's actually kind of enjoyable to be able to hear those things better. Overall - as hearing protection goes. I think the jury is still out on that for me. My ears didn't feel traumatized when I got home after this ride - no ringing or anything. I felt fine- as if I had just been listening to music on headphones for a couple of hours (I listen to music at normal volumes). We'll see as time goes on. For right now, the setup seems doable.
I noted that I put the neck curtain on my half helmet. As anybody who wears a half helmet may know, the helmet straps can catch the wind and create a lot of noise. The Motikom combated this additional wind noise some, but I was looking for more. If you put your hands over the opening between the straps, it makes a huge difference. So, to test this further, I put the neck curtain on. Yes, the difference was significant. One downside - in this case - the neck curtain has a bulge of the bottom of it that causes the ear pockets to be pressed against the ears (to provide a seal) when you cinch down the helmet straps. This causes some pressure to be put in the earbuds impacting comfort a little bit. I'm going to be trying a pair of these half helmet ear pads to see how they work...
Now that I'm thinking about it... Probably should have put those on my helmet a long time ago - assuming they help mitigate the wind noise. Anyway, they would be preferable to the neck curtain in the summer and also for overall comfort of the earbuds.
That's it for now...
Some full-face helmet testing coming up soon.
