So I bought a Voiis Mini last week and I've been giving it a bit of a trial. I snapped it up on 1day for $60 so it was comparatively cheap.
The idea was to buy it for my mum so she could use it to make skype calls. She needs to have a phone or device in her hand for it to make sense to call someone, she refuses to use a headset.
First impressions of the mini are that it's decent at what it does. Installation was rather painless, pairing was easy, range seems good, call quality seems okay at this point (need to do a proper test). This is a Windows device though so you'll need Windows to get the most out of it. I haven't tried to use it on Linux yet, but I don't see why it couldn't work as a VoIP handset.
It's let down in some areas though:
- When you're in conversation with a person the mini will beep/vibrate every time they chat to you, it's not smart enough to figure out you're actually at the PC and stop the alerts. (You can manually turn off the Mini or disable alerts in the dock)
- If someone logs in with an 'Away' state it seems to forget to alert you
- The music streamer makes you a bit blind but I don't see myself using it much anyway
However it does some things well:
- You can change your status from the Mini for all the apps you have running
- You can set a bunch of preset replies to messages
- You can make/answer Sykpe calls rather easily
All in all if my Mum doesn't like this little thing I think I could do much worse.
Also posted on Gadgetinator
