Home > Consumer Reviews > Msi Star Key Bluetooth USB Dongle

I purchased this product to pair with a Bluetooth headset/headphone to listen to music and be able to talk on Skype while away from my computer. The device is performing fine, however the setup has been a bit problematic. When you plug in this device (or any other Bluetooth device for that matter) to a pc with Windows XP (Service Pack 2), it will be recognized and set up to work with Microsoft's Bluetooth driver. However Microsoft's current driver does not support audio communication with headsets, so if you use a Bluetooth headset you will need to install the adaptor's own driver. The driver software cd comes with the product but it may be worthwhile to check MSI's website for more recent versions of it. My experience with this driver has been less than perfect; I had to uninstall/reinstall several times for the device to function with MSI's driver properly. Also you may need to manually disable Microsoft's driver after this installation if it is not disabled automatically during the installation of MSI's driver.

Overall I am happy with my purchase and I think this is a quality product.


I also want to add some information that can be deemed useful by future buyers of this Bluetooth adaptor:

Two characteristics you may want to consider when purchasing a Bluetooth adaptor are its data transmission speed and its range.

The data transmission speed of a Bluetooth adaptor (a.k.a. dongle) depends on the adaptor's protocol version. The products that sell today are either Version 1.1, 1.2 or 2.0, with the last two being more dominant. Version 1.2 operates at speeds up to 0.7 Mb per second and Version 2.0 operates at speeds up to 2.1 Mbps (3x Version 1.2 speed).

Bluetooth adaptors also have a 'Class' rating which determines their range. Oldest (and now obsolete) class is 'Class 3' which had a range of 1 meter (~3.3ft). Today you can find products that are either 'Class 2' or 'Class 1'. Class 2 Bluetooth devices transmit up to a range of 10 meters (~33ft), while Class 1 devices transmit up to 100 meters (~330ft). Classes are not version specific; older Version 1.2 adaptors are Class 2, more recent 1.2 and 2.0 Versions are Class 1.

An important thing to keep in mind when buying a Bluetooth adaptor is that neither the connection speed nor the range of your network will fully be determined by your adaptor. After all, it's a network and the receiving device also has a thing to say (bottleneck issue). A Class 1 , Version 2.0 dongle, for example, will not perform up to its maximum range (330 ft) or maximum data transfer rate (2.1Mbps) if it is paired with a receiver device (headset, printer etc..), that is Class 2 and that is Version 1.2. The speed and range of such a network will be closer to the inferior values in each category, in this case closer to those of Version 1.2 and Class 2. However such a network should still work fine because the version and class protocols are backward compatible; units with newer protocols will work with units with older protocols.

To sum up, buying the adaptor with the best features will not necessarily make your Bluetooth network faster or further reaching unless it is paired with a receiver device that is equally advanced. Today, for example, almost all Bluetooth headsets you can find in the market are Class 2 (for practical power saving purposes, since these devices need regular charging) and hence will not work at distances much more than 33ft even if they are paired with Class 1 adaptors.

This bluetooth dongle works like a charm. The included software package makes it easy to configure the system to do just about anything you could think of with bluetooth, from answering your phone through the computer (don't know why you'd want to though...) to easily moving files back and forth from device to device (what you're probably buying it for).

It's a bluetooth 2.0 device, so there is a nice strong signal to connect to (of course, the other device should be 2.0 as well to take advantage of the extended range), and it fits well next to other USB devices on my computer (unlike some other dongles I have bought in the past that nearly take up two ports worth of width).

Overall, I would recommend this to anyone looking to add Bluetooth to their home or mobile pc.

Just download drivers from their site, and you're done!! Does what it said. Also great for A2DP (stereo bluetooth headphones).

This thing works flawlessly. Open the package and follow the directions and you won't have a single problem

Had this dongle for about two weeks now, and hands down it is the best one I've used. I've went through quite a bit of these received over the past few years, mostly because of incompatibility issues. Most dongles out there rely on the WACOM stacks which are not very compatible with Microsoft. Especially in Vista, the old WACOM-based dongles cause all sorts of device recognition problems. There are ways to install a WACOM driver but it's a cumbersome process.

MSI dongle is one of the few in the market that use the built in Microsoft stacks. They are essentially inferior to WACOM but in terms of user friendliness, there's no other way to go. As a result, this BT dongle is a plug-n-play device. I own both XP and Vista computers and in either case, I didn't even need to use the driver CD included in the box. As soon as I plugged it in, the computer automatically recognized the dongle and installed the appropriate drivers. MSI easily makes up for the inferiority of the stacks by making their hardware better. This BT dongle really has "the" best range and speed of all the adapters in the market.

If you're looking for a BT dongle that is small and looks pretty, this is not the one for you. However, none of the other BT adapters will yield better connectivity and user friendliness than this one. Considering that far inferior BT dongles than this one are sold for higher prices, this is a great buy. I'm sure the performance you can get out of it will easily overrule the form factor.