Home > Consumer Reviews > Black USB Bluetooth Dongle Adapter

even though the Product Features say it is.
"Compatible with MacOS, Linux, Windows Vista 32/XP/2000/Me/98"

The packing does not mention MacOS at all, and comes with no drivers.

Since this budget dongle boasts Bluetooth v2.0 + EDR, I was expecting a high sustained bitrate transfer to my bluetooth audio headset. I was sadly mistaken. Although it is able to make the connection, the audio stream invariable crackles and breaks up every minute or so. I know does not stem from my headset, as it works beautifully with my laptop's bluetooth card. This dongle was pretty disappointing. I guess you get what you paid for in this case.

I should point out that it DOES come with BlueSoleil 2.0, which is a nice, difficult-to-find software that is pretty nice. Almost worth the cost of the dongle. However, with Vista SP2, Vista now has a decent bluetooth interface of its own, so that is not so necessary anymore.

My unit came totally unbranded--it's a nondescript black stick that could be mistaken for a flash drive easily. Part of why I bought this is because the Amazon page said that it was USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The packaging doesn't really indicate whether or not the device support EDR, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume that it does, hoping the seller wouldn't lie on their Amazon page if they didn't know what they were talking about. ;) Can anyone confirm this?

I tested this with two of my machines; one running Fedora 10 and another running Windows 7 RC1. The device was installed automatically in both cases and appears to work flawlessly--there was no need to supply drivers other than the ones that Fedora already shipped with or that Windows 7 downloaded from Microsoft. Some reviewers claimed that this device is not Linux compatible, but it's utter nonsense and I doubt that the people who wrote that even actually use Linux or tried it in the past 10 years.

I bought this device so I could connect my Motorola wireless headset to my computer for making Skype calls. I never had any experience with using Bluetooth on the PC (previously I could only use the headset with my mobile phone), but I had no trouble setting this up, and it works great. This thing was worth a lot more than the $5 I paid for it, so if you don't have any computers with Bluetooth I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't buy this (or similar bargain); Bluetooth has a lot of great uses with common hardware, and hopefully it will come standard on more machines in the future.

Windows XP users should probably look elsewhere. It did not come with any software whatsoever. This leaves you needing a BlueTooth stack. A trial download of BlueSoleil works with it very well (for about 3 minutes) -- but this should have been included with the product. An additional software purchase of $29.95 pretty much eliminates any 'bargain' status.
NOTE: For windows vista this isn't an issue; no additional software is needed.

I bought this alongside a microsized dongle from the same company. They shipped them both in the same package but charged me for separate shipping. So the shipping price is essentially the scam they use to make money. But since I paid 6 bucks total with shipping which is stil 1/3 the price of some competing products, I wasn't as upset as I would be normally. Just factor the shipping cost into the purchase price and move on.

Anyway the software on the disk works fine. It's not the newest version, but be aware that upgrading to the newest version is 19.95 which would completely defeat the purpose of buying the off brand stick. So stick with whats on the CD i you have to install a utility. Also note that the software isn't completely necessary, while it does add some functionality, Windows XP recognizes the dongle and installs basic drivers that seem to work just fine.

I can sync my Nokia N95 to this and it discovers and pairs up without a hitch. Data transfer seems fine, if not particularly speedy, about 6kbps to my phone. You probably shouldn't be trying to transfer huge files over bluetooth anyway.

All-in-all, it's cheap and effective.