Quantcast
Home Gear Gadgets Scosche BTFreq Pro Review: No Bluetooth, No Aux Port? No problem

Scosche BTFreq Pro Review: No Bluetooth, No Aux Port? No problem

3837
Scosche BTFreq Pro Review

No Bluetooth or no aux port in your car? No headphone jack on your phone? No problem. The Scosche BTFreq Pro wireless hands-free car kit provides the convenience of Bluetooth over FM modulation without swapping out your in dash receiver and keeps you fast charging while on-the-go.

Quick pairing, easy to use & it works. Hands-free operation of your smartphone while you’re driving isn’t just about convenience, it’s the law. Besides, if you’ve ever used your GPS you know it sucks down the power like no tomorrow. Bluetooth doesn’t help either if you run it all day long.

Having a combo fast-charge and FM modulator in a compact unit is a nice little gadget if you don’t have a Bluetooth or 3.5mm aux plug on the your car stereo. The BTFreq Pro makes your day-to-day life a little easier.

Scosche BTFreq Pro Hands-Free Wireless car kit review
Scosche BTFreq Pro Hands-Free Wireless car kit review

Scosche has provided us with the BTFreq Pro so that we could bring you our first hand experience and coverage.

Specs

The Scosche BTFreq Pro comes equipped with Bluetooth v5.0 for best-in-class performance and clarity. The BTFreq Pro connects to your smartphone or other device over Bluetooth and connects to your car stereo through your car stereo’s FM signal.

Plug into your cars 12v cigarette lighter/auxiliary power port for 18W of glorious fast-charge power delivery! A native USB-C port allows for Fast-Charging of Type-C to Type-C devices. It also has a USB-A 12W port for any older devices.

An onboard microphone resides on the silver podium. It looks like you can interact with that silver arm but it’s just a riser for the mic.

Lastly there is a 3.5mm audio output jack directly behind the channel switching button. This is for devices that do not have Bluetooth that you might want to connect to your car stereo like a dedicated MP3 player.

Scosche BTFreq Pro Review
Scosche BTFreq Pro wireless Bluetooth FM Modulator with Fast-charge
  • Bluetooth v5.0
  • A2DP for stereo over Bluetooth
  • HFP for hands-free calling
  • FM transmitter frequency: 87.5 – 107.9 Mhz
  • USB-A: 5VDC at 2.4A (12W)
  • USB-C: 5VDC at 3A
  • 9VDC at 2A
  • 12VDC at 1.5A (18W)
  • USB PD 3.0

Controls

On the face of the unit is an LCD that displays the FM station and doubles as a Multi-Function button. Along the right side of the unit is a button labeled “CH” which basically locks or unlocks the ability to change the FM station your BTFreq Pro is broadcasting over.

The black tuning lever can be rocked up or down and is located to the right opposite the silver microphone podium. Pushing the Multi-Function button/center LCD allows you to pause music, play or interact with phone calls.

For the ultimate integration the BTFreq Pro can also access your Voice Assistant. Simply depress the Multi-function button (the LCD dial) 3 seconds to engage your Google, Siri, Bixby or other smartphone assistant.

Set up

The broadcast range of BTFreq Pro isn’t super far but it’s still Bluetooth so it can potentially run into interference from neighboring vehicles and/or in cities where signals are bouncing off buildings.

Find an FM station on your car stereo that isn’t broadcasting anything and has no hissing or other signal interference. Depress and hold the Channel button (labeled ‘CH’) located along the right side of the unit and hold it for 3x until you hear the chime. Use the rocker arm to tune into a specific FM station of your choosing, then depress the Channel button again till it locks in the FM station.

Scosche BTFreq Pro FM Modulator and Fast Charger
Scosche BTFreq Pro FM Modulator and Fast Charger

Our Experience

Pairing is very quick and reliable connecting to a Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G or iPhone 12. Most times the Bluetooth connection re-establishes itself when you go in and out of range/turn the car on or off. An audible chime signals you that the unit is broadcasting. There were select times where it did not; in that case pairing up the phone again is quick since there’s no code to enter.

Interference

We gave the Scosche BTFreq Pro a run during Black Friday holiday traffic and we were very impressed! Typically you’d run into lots of interference from neighboring cars in traffic, we experienced none that day. Open road, sitting in bumper to bumper, it worked really well.

However in close proximity to buildings in the city we did experience some occasional interference and some hiss when nothing was playing over the connection. Nothing is perfect but the BTFreq Pro is able to broadcast very good quality sound out to your chosen FM station 98% of the time for us. Your mileage may vary.

Audio Quality

Audio quality is excellent. The BTFreq utilizes A2DP Bluetooth v5 for true stereo; when you pop on quality audio, even quality streaming audio from say Vimeo or Youtube, it’s solid. Toss on a high quality recording like say a remastered Mean Street by Van Halen and you’ll hear it. It beats the heck out of running an old 3.5mm to analog tape cassette mono sound quality adapter. Again, if you’re using a newer iPhone or Galaxy device with no headphone jack, that wouldn’t help you anyway.

Voice Calls

Volume for the people on the opposite end could be louder, makes you sound a bit distant. The extended microphone seems to work fine with minimum interference in our usage. Functional and it works.

Scosche BTFreq Pro partially obscured by gear shift lever
Scosche BTFreq Pro partially obscured by gear shift lever

Improvements

The USB Type C and USB Type A port reside on the left side which can be obtrusive for some car dash layouts. It would have been preferred to have the cords plug in on the face of the unit or at least be forward facing. This is very subjective though. You can spin the BTFreq Pro around for better cable management but then your controls and LCD screen rotate as well. Does it matter that the LCD is upside down if it puts the cord out of your way? Not really.

BTFreq Pro vs BTFreq

There’s a slight design difference, the BTFreq Pro has a silver microphone podium and rocker tuning arm, while the BTFreq is all black and the dial turns to tune instead. Aside from these visual differences the charging wattage/voltage is the same. One notable difference is that the BTFreq Pro seems to support newer devices. eg the BTFreq is compatible with iPhone 6 – iPhone XS while the BTFreq Pro is compatible up to iPhone 11max. Also mentionable that the Galaxy s21 and iPhone 12 are not listed but it still works just great.

That’s a Wrap

Scosche’s BTFreq Pro BTFMPD3SR is a solid performer and easily one of the best FM modulators we have ever used for the price. The BTFreq Pro is an effective solution to retrofit your car stereo with Bluetooth functionality without tearing apart your dashboard. Traveling around with the family often means multiple devices and the onboard 20W USB-C and 18W USB-A plugs make it easy to keep all your devices charged up and ready to go. Recommended buy

BTFreq Pro wireless hands-free car kit (BTFMPD3SR) $39.99
www.scosche.com