doubles as an auxiliary wired input.
On The Road - Misses There are four areas in which the FM5C could use improvement, chief among them the unit’s lack of a jack for in-ear head- phones. Experienced riders know the value of wearing earplugs, which dramatically reduce the chances of permanent hearing loss and incurable afflictions (such as tin- nitus) resulting from prolonged exposure to excessively high levels of sound (wind noise, engine noise, etc.) For this reason, over the course of my entire riding career, I have always used ear plugs, and for com- municators or music, a set of noise-block- ing speaker earphones such as Etymotic. Frankly speaking, as great as the FM5C’s helmet speakers are, comparing the sound clarity of any helmet speakers to a good set of noise-blocking speaker earphones is like comparing an outhouse to the Taj Mahal. So in this case, with no speaker jack to allow earphones o the FM5C, the rider has three choices: Ride without hearing protection,
use standard ear plugs which will seriously degrade sound quality from the helmet speakers, or wear the NoNoise Motorsport ceramic filter earplugs (tested in BMW Owners News September 2014, page 118.) Obviously, the NoNoise plugs are the best balance between hearing protection and sound clarity given the choices. Nonethe- less, the inability to use in-ear speakers on an intercom is a non-starter for many rid- ers, myself included. My second complaint is ergonomics. The
buttons on the comm unit itself are simply too small. With fall or winter gloves on, it is almost impossible to press the “-“ button (closest to the rear of the unit) by tactile feel alone, which is frustrating while in motion. More pronounced buttons would easily solve this issue. A third disappointment was in the realis-
tic range, which in my experience never exceeded 0.4 miles in full duplex mode. This is less than half of the advertised range of 1.3km, and this despite my testing on fully charged batteries in an unrestricted
rural area. The range only drops from there when the rider transitions to more urban settings. As the useful range is exceeded in duplex intercom mode, the rider hears a rapid clicking sound before the comm cuts off entirely. On the plus side, once the comms are within range again, they auto- matically reconnect. Finally, I found the automatic volume
control quite finicky. It always seemed to be either too loud or too quiet for any given situation. Luckily, this feature can be dis- abled with help from a YouTube video (
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMRK9U _69OE) which affords the rider full manual control of the volume. Overall, the Interphone FM5C is a fine
intercom with many worthwhile features, as well as a few niggling faults which will hopefully be rectified on the next genera- tion. For more information, visit www.
interphonewireless.com. MSRP: $399 (for 2x FM5C comms – single comms are avail- able for $239)
www.helitemoto.com
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