last week when I sat down with Gareth Jones we talked about what he wanted to
automate next and what he said was his car and so I went out and I found one of
these Anker Roav Bolt devices and I've gone ahead I've tested it a number of
different ways and today I'm going to share you share with you my story and my
review of the Anker Roav Bolt in order to even get this device in Canada it was
a bit of a it was a bit of an issue for me I mean they're only selling this
really in the US at this point and so this has made it hard to acquire now
somebody did import it and I'll tell you they weren't too excited about how it
was performing so when I got to the actual place what I instantly found out
was that the person had an iPhone just like mine it was actually the exact same
model of iPhone and that they were basically calling the anchor Rove bolt
connection and and methodology a well they said it was in development so as I
pick up the device you know it's not going well right off the bat he has to
factory reset it he struggles to factory reset it I just say you know I man don't
worry about it I'm gonna take this thing just let me
take it and he hands me that and well this little table here he hands me so
getting a little auxiliary port and that's why I can't show you a full unbox
here of the device but you get a little auxiliary cable you get a pamphlet which
I don't have and you get the device itself so I take it back to my 2014
Mazda it's a cx-9 it relatively high feature car at the time when it came out
I have good Bluetooth or what used to be good Bluetooth and I start the setup
process with a factory reset which is just a hard hold or just a long hold
rather of the Google Assistant button that is actually physically on this
device so you can just hold it and the other thing I do is I plug in my phone
for charging and these are relatively powerful
charging ports here so they were actually charging my phone quite quickly
now there are two far-field microphones here on board as well and those are
relatively good at hearing you versus most cell phones so some positives kind
of rate off the bat now I get into the setup process and I will say that I'm
instantly impressed I kind of what is this guy talking about there's there's
no problems here there's no problems with the iPhone he was telling me it was
really a beta program for the iPhone I'm thinking no he's he's just missed it
here and I've lucked out by getting this for $50 from him so I'm going through
the setup process Bluetooth connection rate into the phone and then it's it
basically asks me to identify my car's bluetooth and it makes the full
connection process happen and now what I have is basically my phone at acting as
an intermediary between the Roav Bolt here and my car's stereo and I instantly
have connection and I'm able to start making commands now unfortunately this
is where problems start creeping up ice I make a simple command like what time
is it and I ask for the weather now when I ask for the weather after I've asked
one time for the time there what happens is my Bluetooth no longer seems to
handle the break of connection so it made an initial connection and then it
kind of broke the connection in terms of audio coming out of my phone and
remember this is just a 2014 car with a little bit of an older firmware on the
Bluetooth and so that's really starting to cause me issues because I'm only
hearing some of the time now there's a nice little setting within the Google
Assistant app for this accessory when you're connected that allows you to
treat it like a phone call every time so it brings it into your car stereo like
it's a phone call from your phone and that causes it to come in and out but
what I'll tell you is I'm still only getting about
fifty percent of the messages out of the device through my Mazda here from 2014
and this continues and I hit another struggle which is a pretty easy struggle
for you to handle but I wouldn't really call this automation unless you're going
on a long trip I think this is gonna frustrate you over
time you have to keep all of the different applications open that you
want to use so if you want to use Google Maps well you're going to need to keep
that open so you can start navigation and it'll work just fine once that's
open, with Google play music or any music service that you have
connected that has to remain open on your phone and then it can be utilized
by the Google Assistant in the Google Assistant app needs to remain on and
running in the background as well and you know that starts to tweak me into
well why aren't I using the Google Assistant application more on that later
I can ask it to make phone calls but then with an iPhone
not an Android because I had brought an Android as well the iPhone forces me to
press the call button now the same thing kind of happens with text messages
although it says it's sending the text message never sends it but I have to do
the confirmation on screen to actually send that that's just a limitation of
iOS users but you can start to hear how the experience on iOS I was actually
getting the right information from the individual I bought this from you know
he was really telling me hey it's not working so well you're not gonna love
this situation now what I can do without any interaction I can check my calendar
I can check reminders I can start my music I can do all of those basic things
that I think you'll want to do I can also ask for search results and things
like that so there's a lot of good functionality I'm starting to get out of
the device but ultimately I'm having to interact with my phone a little more
than I'd like to so I get home with this 2014 Mazda and I go through the setup
process I Re-set it up with another Android device and I
go through and I think okay well I'm gonna have a pretty different experience
here but all the while as I was using it with the iPhone I was finding that I
still wasn't hearing the device every time sometimes there was a lag that
caused me to actually miss the conversation or or miss the next part
where I was supposed to interact so I could ask it to message someone and then
it would ask me well mobile work or whatever the different numbers where I
had in the system sometimes the little bit of lag or delay in the system meant
I missed it and sometimes I didn't hear it come through my stereo so starting to
get a little bit frustrated with the device so you know I go through the
Android setup process I get that all done it's it's working a little bit
better because it can bring up the different applications natively and
things are working a little bit better but I'm still having that variability
with the vehicle and so well it's time to switch the vehicle so I head into my
garage and I get into my relatively newer Armada here we have a Nissan
Armada and that car connects up just fine it does seem to struggle a little
bit between the the phone again and having this other Bluetooth connection
live but I eventually get it connected there was some there was some little
fiddling going on there basically but I do get it connected I had to connect
this secondarily to my phone and that managed to keep everything kind of going
so then I go ahead and I utilize but again I'm I'm struggling with the
accuracy of this device it's it's not responding every time I want it to and
I'm still not hearing it sometimes the music situation is a little bit
different I can I can now control the music on my
phone through the visual interface I have in the Armada and that seems to
decouple it from this device and actually
getting the music to work through voice control or change songs things like that
other things from the music and so the music doesn't actually go lower as my
Google Maps are working so I start to experience this other set of problems
and but you know in general it's a little bit better now I was actually
going to drop off my vehicle and pick this up this is a 2019 Nissan Altima
actually and so I have a third car I can go ahead and test it with and that's
where you're seeing lots of the shots here for setup and things now as I go
through spree setting it up again I don't factory reset this time and I go
ahead and I utilize my iPhone or not I didn't even bring an Android in this
case because now it just works the same as an Android I just have to keep those
apps open so I go ahead and I utilize it here but what I find is just the
placement of my 12 volt port that this plugs into causes this device to not
hear very well in this car which is a very quiet ride still so I'm confused by
that and I'm finding again the Bluetooth connection the initial setup of that
Bluetooth was hard now what does this all come to we could talk for I could
talk to you about this for days and days and days
but what I've come to personally for myself is I've tried this in three
different cars I have really tried to make it work but ultimately what I've
come to is this is not ready for primetime it's not ready for you it's
not ready for me I will probably keep the device and play with it a little
more wait to see when it is ready but what I come to and I don't think this is
necessarily anchors fault I don't think it's necessarily Google's fault I think
what is going on is there are so many situations that they've had to deal with
here Bluetooth setups in cars are very different and they don't get updated
like you know over-the-air devices are devices that we can go and simply
firmware by plugging in a USB cable they're not getting those same updates
you have to usually take them to a dealership in the case of my Mazda I
can't even get it updated and there is no update so they're dealing with this
variability in the Bluetooth setup and I think that's where I had the most issues
with this device now secondarily I struggled sometimes just utilizing the
device in terms of its own personal delay so it goes and it makes a
connection again or I think it creates an active connection because it actually
seems to sit in low energy bluetooth so it goes and it creates that active
connection there's a little bit of a delay after I've used the wake word and
then I sometimes I miss sometimes I miss my opportunity to actually give it the
next command so it becomes an awkward situation and I struggle with utilizing
the device and again that that rate of it actually working actually seems to
not matter what car I'm in it's about 50 percent of the time that I get a
response out of the device so I can ask it for something and sometimes it'll
just turn off sometimes it'll respond and I won't hear it sometimes it'll
respond and I'll hear it but that again I would say it's about 50 percent of the
time so this device is not worth primetime it's not worth your time and
you're probably going to be a very specific person that is going to find a
good use for this what I will say this these are the people who maybe want to
look at this device if you have an older car with an aux port and and you know
also if you have an FM transmitter you'd like to look at that situation tech with
Brett set his up this way and you know he didn't have Bluetooth in his car he
didn't have an aux port so used an FM transmitter but I think this would work
with an aux port just as well in a lot of cases you'd be able to switch back
and forth between the aux port radio if you wanted to listen to that it'd be
much quicker switching than Bluetooth you
wouldn't have to sit in silence if you weren't playing any music through your
phone which uses data plans which is not okay in some countries you know the the
real setup I think is when you plug this in or put it on an FM transmitter and
then you pipe that through I think that's going to be the most reliable and
best way to utilize this device and so again I think this is probably older
cars because other people you already have Android Auto or you already have an
Android device with the new driving mode this is a really really small market so
you know guys if you're wondering whether or not I think this would work
in your situation go ahead leave that down in the comments below otherwise go
ahead and check out some of our other reviews here on automate your life that
playlist is up now and otherwise guys don't hate, automate