The claimed battery life is* 16 hours. I easily get around 22-24 hours when I’m using the c30 only for music and calls.
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After roughly about 3500 Kms since I picked up the c30, I thought I’d weigh in and provide a review of sorts. My primary use case is within the city, on my daily commute where I listen to music and take calls regularly. I’m not going to get into the selection process as part of this post, however. Let’s jump right into that good stuff
The c30 is light, weighing at just 70 gms, you barely notice it on your helmet. However, I must admit that it is a little bulky. I haven’t faced any quality issues with the antenna mechanism, the plastics, or the rubber, and I must say Bluarmor has done a good job on this front. I quite like the carbon-esque finish as well!
Ease of use, however, is where the c30 does not score as high. The buttons are quite tiny, and while you quickly get used to them with regular gloves, it is a whole different ballgame with winter/waterproof gloves. You barely can feel the damn thing. I think a dial of sorts like what the Parani has would have been better, or even a simple large button placement like the TVS S20x, which is just a rebadged c30.**
- Battery Life and Charging
This is an area where the c30 excels. The claimed battery life is* 16 hours. I easily get around 22-24 hours when I’m using the c30 only for music and calls. With the intercom function, I used it for about 4 hours of ride time (MESH intercom + Music) and my battery dropped 10%, so make of that what you will.
The c30 charges really quickly. A full charge is roughly 20-25 minutes, and it also supports on-the-go charging, which is great!
- Audio and Microphone Quality
“Jay Bee Ell speakers it has macha”
The Audio quality is good. It gets sufficiently loud for you to enjoy music while still allowing you to have spatial awareness. You can also use this if you use riding earplugs (Pinlocks in my case), but you’ll need to max out the volume. Bluarmour includes enough spacers in the box to get the fit just right. However, if your helmet doesn’t have recessed speaker pockets, it would be a problem I suppose.*
The noise cancellation is excellent. When I’m on a phone call, doing even 100kmph, the person on the other end can barely tell that I’m riding a motorcycle. In fact, I could still hear and understand my friend who was on a Duke 390 with no windscreen, doing 110kmph. (The windscreen is still ideal though)
The c30 offers both MESH and universal Bluetooth connectivity, along with some nifty features. When you’re connected on MESH, you can patch in either a Bluetooth intercom or even a phone call! To illustrate, say Person A and B are on a MESH Call, and Person C is the pillion of Person A with a Bluetooth Intercom, you can patch Person C into the MESH Call. Similarly, if Person D calls Person A or B via phone, you can patch Person D as well. I however didn’t try this feature out.
The c30, via its universal pairing mode, can connect to any Bluetooth device, including another person’s TWS earphones. Please note, however, that the range on Bluetooth is only 50 meters and is only designed for rider-pillion use.
The MESH intercom has a claimed range of 1.2 km LOS, which I found to be fairly close in reality. I was easily able to maintain 600 – 800m of distance on the highway without an issue, but lost the connection after about 1 km. The audio also gets quite choppy at around the 900 km mark. The intercom instantly reconnects when you are back in range, which is great. In the city, I had no issues with the intercom and was able to test it at about 500m of distance between us, in heavy traffic.*
This is where my experience has been crappy so far. For context, I have a Oneplus 8 running Android 13. For whatever reason, despite me giving the app all the permissions under the sun, I am unable to accept or reject WhatsApp calls (Which my friend with an iPhone 13 is able to do).
Secondly, the App has a feature that provides for a readout of WhatsApp messages on the go, which is really useful IMO. This was working great until a recent app update that came out after the
Bluarmor HS1 was launched. Now, the app completely disconnects when I get a WhatsApp message. This continued to happen even when I turned the feature off and even resetting the app, the intercom or the network settings hasn’t solved this.
My friend and I were not able to pair our intercoms (initially) through the Bluarmour app and I resorted to using the Royal Enfield App, which has support for their Motowave X1 (Also a rebadged c30) that WhatsApp function still doesn’t work though.
Another annoying glitch I’ve been facing is that the app randomly disconnects while listening to music (while still showing that it’s connected, but you can’t hear anything) and requires a restart to reconnect. Additionally, there is random distortion while listening to music albeit rarely.
The customer service has been pretty responsive so far and their office isn’t too far from where I live, so I probably will head there to sort these issues out.
I’m not too sure if the issues I’m facing are particular to just my unit (My friend has faced zero issues with his) but they are quite draining, especially when you’ve spent 11,000 Rs on an intercom. I hope to get these resolved soon, and if they are, this is hands down an excellent intercom. If you have any questions on something that I may have missed, please feel free to ask. Cheers!
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