SubscribeIn my blog overview of music while you train devices, I mentioned the Cardo BK-1 Duo as an on-bike bluetooth enabled wireless device for getting music from an iphone (or other bluetooth enabled music player) to your ears in a way that doesn’t interfere with ambient traffic noise, etc. I wrote that I really like the BK-1 for this and that the bluetooth reception is amazing, with no drop-outs and great signal strength. But the BK-1 is so much more.
The BK-1 is a bluetooth enabled full-on, voice activated transceiver. It gives you bike to bike easy to use and quality communications for up to 3 riders at a range of about 500m.
The BK-1 Duo comes in nice hard-shell protective box, seen here beside my RudyProject helmet for sizing. This helmet will soon be BK-1’d.
Unpacking the box, everything you need to install the setup is included, right down to alcohol swabs to clean the velcro mount points on your helmet.
The Duo even comes with 2 chargers so that you can charge both radios at the same time, in different locations. I was at first surprised they didn’t just provide a dual charger, but the 2 chargers later made more sense.
Installation is pretty quick and easy, but does require a little trial and error to get the mounts in the right place for the earphones to comfortably cover your ears.
As I said in my music survey, the BK-1 is great for on-bike tunes, the battery lasts over 6 hrs from experience in my longest training/test ride. What’s really surprising is the transmission sound quality from the little boom microphone.
I had assumed that wind noise would be a terrible issue with the BK-1, either when using it as a cell phone headset or when used for bike-to-bike communications. Not so! Cardo has done a great job of isolating (and perhaps electrically filtering?) wind noise. It’s barely perceptible to the listener when you’re in motion, sure there’s ambient noise that gets picked up, but you have to expect that. Still the transmission quality of the BK-1 and the isolation of your voice from background noise is pretty amazing. The voice activation feature is solid, without word clipping or transmission delays (very much unlike the old VOX systems of the past where your 1st and last words of any sentence would never reach the listener).
Range-wise I found the advertised range of 500m to be pretty accurate, depending on terrain. On a flat, straight, open road, the useable range was closer to 600m, but this dropped off in hills or forest to closer to 300-400m, still very acceptable in my opinion. In really dense forest, on single-track trails with lots of hills and corners, the BK-1 started to have some troubles and the range dropped pretty low (we didn’t measure but it was pretty much the case of “I need to be able to see you”).
The BK-1 is a 1st gen product, but they have built software upgrade-ability into the devices so as they work on upgrades you’re not stuck with an end-of-life product, which is very nice.
One thing that occurred to me, late in the season, was that the BK-1 could also be a great coaching tool: coach with 1 unit, athlete with the other on the bike. The coach could drive a car and be providing feedback to the rider in a way that doesn’t require them both to stop and have a conversation. This could be extremely useful when trying to adjust form or provide technique coaching “on the fly”.
All in, I really like the Bk-1. While I normally train solo, it’s an amazing on-bike music and bluetooth headset device and when I have the opportunity to go for a social ride, it’s super-nice to have easy bike to bike communications. By far, the BK-1 is the leader in this space today with a solid product launch and a long history of radio communications, I expect great things for the BK-1’s future.
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