Anker Roav Bolt - A We love testing review.
The review for the Anker Roav Bolt can be summed up as the device that you didn’t know you needed. I was skeptical at first. It was a product that I felt wasn't needed. May car already has Bluetooth so I figured I would be using the 3.5 mm jack on my phone. Well I clearly miss read the fine print on the product because I didn't have to. The package came in a beautiful box. I remember thinking that this is a way nicer box than it needed to be. The packaging was appreciated. After opening the package, The Roav Bolt was sitting there in all its glory. A beautiful matt finish.
As I admire the plug in all its glory the device has 2 usb ports, a 3.5 mm jack, 4 leds, and a google home control button. When I plugged the device in for the first time I went through the set up. Shock after shock I was stunned by how effortless the set up was. I linked the Bluetooth and I was then welcomed with a screen to go through the google home set up prompts. In the setup prompts I was asked “Hey, is this your car?” meaning my car’s Bluetooth connection. I responded yes, it was. I was then prompted to perform a few more setups and a firmware update. I gave the device a few test phrases and then let it go for a day leaving it in its new home, my console.
Over the next few weeks I’ve been testing the Anker Roav bolt putting it through its paces. Throwing the device, the odd phrase and shouting at it with the window down. For the most part the bolt performed well 90% of the time it triggered like it was supposed to and answered like it was supposed to. It really is the companion I needed during my daily drive. Weather, news, music, and maps what more can someone ask for.
Critiques, there was a few odd things that I should be sending off to Google. If anyone from Anker has a google contact that I can report issues too that would be great…. Please share your thoughts if you experienced any thing on these.
So I had a few issues and I feel like these aren’t the fault of Anker but either my phone or a firmware update would fix.
- So I couldn’t request the bolt/ google home to open Pandora. This is something that I use at home. Normally I have to say “hey, Google open Pandora.” Instead I have to say “hey, Google play some music.” This allows Google home/ bolt to use my default player.
- Firmware updates. I had to manually pull up connected Bluetooth devices and go to the bolt to even notice by happenstance that I had a new pending firmware updates.
- Lastly, there was a weird interaction with do not disturb mode
- Where it would cause all of my notifications to come out of the Bluetooth and the phone. After I was done with my ride I would be at work and I would receive the notification twice and during a phone call. So the sound would play twice .2ms after the other so it sounds like a shadow of the first sound.
- During a call I started to hear my full notification instead of a chirp during the call. The only fix I could find was to turn off DND and also readjust all my sounds and volumes to send the defaults back. I still don’t think the chirp is back during a phone call.
