In-car hands-free gets wake-up call

This new hands-free kit from Bury Technologies looks like a travel alarm clock. But its lightweight appearance hides a raft of clever features.

As well as a clear screen, it boasts voice recognition technology, so drivers don’t even have to touch the gadget if they want to chat on the move. But there are on-screen prompts, and it claims to display text messages – although the latter function worked only with certain phones.

The interface is easy to navigate using hands or speech, while commands for the voice activation are easy to understand. But voice dialling digit by digit is frustrating – it takes a long time to confirm each number.

Sound quality varied, and although the sun visor mount gripped well, it was fiddly to set up. So while the screen looks neat, there are better options available.