5
So I’ve been using SENA SMH5’s for a couple years now. When I purchased the SMH5, I bought the oversized speakers for them. I used mine on pretty much a daily basis, for music and directions while riding alone, as well as use them when my wife is with me for rider to passenger communication. When I bought the SENA units I had previously had a pair of Scala G4’s. The G4’s had relatively small buttons and it was hard to switch modes. Both of the G4 units failed within a month of their warrantee’s expiring, so I was going with something other than Scala.
When riding with my wife she likes to keep the intercom open, so she can comment on things as we are riding. When we had the G4’s this was a challenge for her, as with gloves on it was hard to find the right button to do this. The SENA SMH5’s make this much easier, as you only need to hit the big jog button, but because of her experience with the G4’s she tended to not want to do that, but just keep the channel open. For many rides this is perfectly fine. For rides with an actual destination (we sometimes will pick a city somewhere in the NE and book a hotel for Saturday night, ride there during the day on Saturday, spend the night, and ride back on Sunday) where I need directions from my phone, keeping the intercom open all the time means that I sometimes miss directions. Usually this isn’t that big of a deal, sometimes it is.
Last summer when the 20S was introduced I decided to buy one (just one, not 2) to use as my primary unit, while allowing the wife to continue to use the SMH5. The “feature” that convinced me to buy was what SENA markets as Audio Multitasking. You can read their description of this at 20S - Sena and figure out what you think it is. I *assumed* this was full Audio MUX. In my experience so far, it isn’t… More on that later.
So, I purchased the 20S the day it was available. I bought mine through some weird thing, where it was part of a set that was split up, which meant not getting manuals or official packaging, which was fine (manuals were downloadable anyway and I’m not that into the “unboxing” experience). One of the things that I always hated about the SMH5 was that the mount was separate from the “plug”. On my G4’s the plug was part of the mount itself, so putting it on the helmet was plugging it in. The SMH-5 you had to put on the mount, then plug in a small cable for the speakers / mic. The 20S has fixed this. If you put the unit on the mount, it automatically gets plugged in. You don’t have to do 2 things (sometimes with gloves on) to put it on, just plug it in and it will work. Good improvement. I’m also reasonably sure that the 20S came with both a boom mic and a button mic (for a full face) helmet. I remember that not being the case on the SMH5, and I had to order one or the other. Another point for the 20S.
Attaching the mount to the helmet was straight forward (if you’ve ever done this before). I use the “clamp” style mounts, not the sticky mounts. It clamps on the edge of the helmet like others do, requiring I think a couple of hex head screws to tighten down (I think the hex key comes with it). Worked fine. The speakers on the 20S mounted to the ear holes in my helmet, just like they had for the SMH5. No issues there. (Sidebar: I wear HJC helmets, my current street helmet is their older “race” helmet (RPS-10), all of my HJC’s have come “com ready” with a little pocket in the earpiece for mounting speakers… I can’t speak to other manufacturer’s from the helmet standpoint).
The physical design of the 20S departs somewhat from that of the previous SENA products, but keeps the basic “jog dial” concept, but physically change the shape of it from something of a “dome” to something of a dial. They keep the single button on the “back” of the unit, and add a button to the bottom of the mount. I’m impatient and don’t bother reading what the buttons actually do, and just assume that they work like the SMH5 did… I’m mostly right. Turning on the unit (just like the SMH5) requires you to push down the button on the back (I call it the phone button) and the jog dial at the same time. When you turn it on (and it’s plugged into speaker) it beeps at you and says Hello to let you know it’s working. The same as the SMH-5, the 20S has the volume control “backwards” from the way I think it should work, but it’s consistent. The 20S pairs with my phone reasonably easily, and there’s even a SENA app now. So rather than plugging it into the computer to change settings, I can get to the settings through the phone app. This part is pretty cool. I use google music for listening to stuff and either Waze or Google maps for navigation. Both work well with the phone. It takes me a while to figure out how to get voice commands going with the phone. Pressing the phone button puts the phone into “listen for a command mode”, but it’s not using the SENA speaker (this isn’t really SENA’s fault, but it took me a while). To “fix” this Launch “Google Now”, then use the hamburger menu to get to “Settings”. In Settings go to “Voice” and turn on the switch for “Bluetooth Headset”.
I run this for a week or so by myself. Every once in a while, for some reason, the thing will just stop playing music… I look at my phone and Bluetooth is disconnected. I wait about 20 seconds, the headset beeps at me to let me know it’s connected again and I have to restart my music. That’s weird…
Other things I note… The 20S isn’t loud enough. It’s close, but not quite enough. I don’t think it’s as loud as my SMH5 was. I understand the need to protect people’s hearing, but really? There are many complaints about this. Some of the common work arounds are to place the speakers closer to the ear, or replace them with earbuds. No. The helmet has pockets made for the speaker. That’s where they go. The technology exists to make the speakers work, you’ve done it before. Same helmet, same speaker placement, the SMH5 was (just) loud enough, the 20S is not.
So, wifey and I are leaving for a trip, I need to sync her headset and mine… Find the manual for both the SMH5 and the 20S, put them both in pairing mode… Won’t pair. Turn them both off. Try again. Won’t pair. Spend about 30 minutes trying to get them paired. No. It’s time to leave, we’re just not going to have com on the way there. Once we arrive I spend another hour or so trying to get them paired, no go. Turns out there is a new firmware version available for both, but of course I didn’t bring a computer, so no com on the way home either. This was probably our last trip last year… I put (at least hers) away and didn’t bother with it again until this year.
I did update the firmware in the 20S before the end of riding season. For the remainder of the season the “Bluetooth” disconnect thing keeps happening. Sometimes it takes 5 minutes to disconnect, sometimes it will work for 5 hours fine. I can’t find a pattern to it at all.
Riding season is coming this year, there’s another firmware update. I install it. Still doing the Bluetooth disconnect thing. I’m really getting frustrated with the constant disconnects. Is it my phone? Is it the 20S? I end up spending a big chunk of time installing a different android version on my phone, just to eliminate the Bluetooth stack on the phone from being the problem (BTW, phone works fine with every other Bluetooth device that I try it with, so likelihood of phone was low, but, it was a possibility, so I tried). Still random disconnects. I have gotten so frustrated that I did learn that the 20S has voice commands, so that I can restart the music without actually using the phone. Say “Hello SENA”. It says “Please say a command”. Say “Music” and it will restart my playlist (most of the time, sometimes it just fails quietly, sometimes it takes 2 seconds, sometimes it takes 30 seconds, sometimes it doesn’t pay attention to me saying Hello SENA and I have to push the button on the bottom of the phone.
Remembering my frustration with trying to get my 20S to sync with wifey’s SMH5 previously, a couple days before the trip I get them both out along with the computer. I make sure that everything is running the latest firmware. Follow the direction for pairing them, and it just works, the first time. Either I was a complete idiot previously or updating the firmware has fixed the problem. Units pair fine.
I test them quickly to make sure I can talk into one and hear it in the other. Works.
So, were off on our trip. Intercom is working exactly like it should. Now to try the Audio Multitasking. I get directions going on the phone, com channel open with wifey. For some reason I’m not hearing directions. I’m still having to “switch off” the rider to passenger com to listen to the phone. We’re doing about a 6 hour drive, so I just deal with switching for the trip. We get to the hotel that night and I start messing with things.
It turns out that the Audio multi-tasking was actually working, it just works “crappily” in my opinion. It doesn’t do full Audio “MUX” like I had believed it does. It will play the phone sounds through if there is “no input” on the com channel. It doesn’t mix them. It doesn’t turn one down and the other up. It just waits for the com input to be completely quiet and will then allow the phone to play through. The problem with this… Com is never completely quiet. There’s almost always some small wind noise (I *may* be able to mess with the vox settings on the SMH5, haven’t tried yet) that keeps the com “active” and the phone from being heard. The “killer feature” for which I really purchased the 20S doesn’t work (at all like I expected).
The Bluetooth disconnect problem with my phone continues. It’s frustrating as can be. This never happened with the SMH5. It does with the 20S. If I had it to do over again I would not have purchased. It’s been far more frustrating that the SMH5’s were. It doesn’t work consistently. It’s got a whole bunch of new voice command / tap sort of features that I don’t use, because the basic things that I wanted from it are lacking.
I’ve also purchased a set of Bluetooth FRS/GMRS radios to try with this (and use for com with people who are running the chatterboxes), but haven’t had a chance to try even connecting them yet. If I’m ever allowed to ride again maybe I’ll experiment with that.