This Device Turns Your Motorcycle Helmet Into A Walkie Talkie And It Could Save You In A Crash

Riding a motorcycle is already one of the greatest ways to improve your daily drive, but there is a way to make it even better. See that boring helmet in your garage? You can slap a device on it that effectively turns it into a walkie talkie so you can chat with all of your buddies in a group ride. There are a lot of these communicator devices out there, but one wants to stand out in the pack. I got to try out the latest from Cardo with its Packtalk Pro, and it’s trying to do something being experimented elsewhere in tech.

Detecting crashes has become a pretty big deal in the tech industry. If you have an iPhone 14 or later in your pocket, Apple says it’s able to “detect severe car crashes.” Apple then lists out vehicle types ranging from sedans to pickup trucks. Apple says nothing of motorcycles. That’s where the Cardo Packtalk Pro is supposed to come in. Crashes your phone or wearable may fail to detect should not escape the Packtalk Pro, which might be a lifesaver for a motorcyclist. Cardo Systems has been making communications hardware and software for two decades, but crash detection is a new feature and the highlight of this new device.

[Full Disclosure: Cardo Systems invited me out to Southern California to experience a motorcycle plus the Packtalk Pro. My travel, lodging, food, and some of my fuel were all covered. My contacts at The Brand Amp also provided an Indian Super Chief to ride to/from the event.]

I’ve long been a solo rider. I don’t have many local friends who ride, and when I do get into a group ride, we’re still sort of riding on our own ride, unable to chat with each other. Helmet communications gadgets have been on the market for a very long time, but my motorcycling mates and I never really saw the point. I see it now – adding Cardo’s wedge of technology to the side of my helmet, and speakers and a microphone inside of it, has changed my riding game.

Cardo Systems was the brainchild of Dr. Abraham Glezerman. Back in the early 2000s, Bluetooth tech was really taking off in the cellphone space, and the Scala earpiece allowed for easy hands-free calling with technology that suppressed wind from ruining your calls. As Cardo says today, one day Dr. Glezerman was riding his motorcycle when an idea struck. What if he took the Bluetooth earpiece, made it waterproof, and slapped it on a helmet? He could then take calls and listen to music in his helmet. Cardo Systems was founded in 2003 and the company’s first Bluetooth headset, the Scala Rider, went on sale in 2004. This year, the company marks two decades of selling communicator devices.

While the Packtalk Pro is marketed toward motorcycle riders, a Cardo Systems communications device can be slapped onto practically any helmet. You can use these to chat with your buds during a side-by-side ride, hitting the slopes on skis, or hitting the trails on a mountain bike. If you wear a helmet for the activity, you can slap a Cardo on it. There’s even an independent headset system that works without a helmet.

Once Cardo Systems captured the motorcycle audience, it stopped making phone accessories entirely. Cardo then went all-in on making motorcycle communications better. Cardo followed up the world’s first Bluetooth motorcycle headset with the first motorcycle headset with rider-to-rider communication. In 2007, the Q2 connected two riders up to 0.45 miles apart. The G4 pumped that number up to a mile in 2009.

What about group rides? For that, the company began work on mesh networks, reaching production in 2015 with the original Packtalk. This technology is similar to how your connected devices at home talk to each other and Cardo sees a ton of advantages. Mesh networks are great because devices can attach and detach themselves from the network without interrupting the other devices. Additionally, a mesh network can be set up once and your device can pair and un-pair automatically without any effort on your behalf. Finally, Cardo loves mesh networks because they have up to a mile of range in ideal conditions and can host 15 riders at once.

To be clear, Cardo Systems isn’t the only company out there with a mesh network. Comm systems by Sena Technologies also feature mesh technology. While Cardo is limited to 15 riders for now, Sena’s mesh network has a default setting that allows you to talk to basically infinite people nearby like a high-tech CB radio. Of course, the downside of that is that things get confusing if you’re suddenly hearing a 50-bike group ride all at once.

Cardo also isn’t the only game in town. In addition to Sena, the helmet communications space is chock-full of budget options like Lexin, Fodsports, and countless communicators found on sites like Amazon. The Fodsports FX 10C even claims to use mesh technology with up to ten rider channels. That device is $161 while Cardo wants $400 for the current Packtalk Edge or $459 for the latest cutting-edge Packtalk Pro. Is paying extra worth it? Read on.

More Than Just Chatting

At its heart, the Packtalk Pro is more of what made the original Packtalk a winning product. You get a mesh network with up to 15 riders. I got to test this out in a group ride stretching over 100 miles outside of Temecula, California. We carved mountain curves, stormed down rural roads, and the group didn’t even always stick together.

The group chat was something else. Voice clarity was awesome. How awesome? Cardo’s voice system makes your phone sound pathetic and online game chats cannot compare. I won’t say it’s as if the person is talking there next to you, but the clarity is good enough that you can easily tell each person apart. The good chat quality is backed up by 45mm JBL speakers. These were once a separate upgrade, but now they come in the box.

Prior to the Cardo system, I was running a dirt cheap JZAQ Bluetooth headset for calls and music. It didn’t have rider communication functions, but it did play my tunes and make phone calls. Look at his janky thing:

The call quality was awful and the microphone was almost useless. At least the music sounded decent enough, or so I thought. The JBL speakers of the Packtalk Pro blow those cheap speakers out of the water with impressive clarity and thumping bass. The tunes come in crisp enough that I can tell when my phone’s Bluetooth output gets iffy.

Talking about clarity, my wife reports that phone calls come in loud and clear through the Cardo. She says if it weren’t for the fact that she knew I was on a motorcycle ride, she’d think I was in a car or something. Likewise, I heard her loud and clear despite hauling donkey down a highway.

Cardo advertises a range of about a mile in perfect conditions. Mountains, traffic, and a lot of potential sources of interference make for an imperfect ride. My group experienced a range of about a half mile, which was good enough to know where the stragglers were. Another neat thing is the fact that you can take a phone call during a group ride. When you do that, you temporarily disconnect from the pack. When you hang up, you enter right back into the group.

All of this is to say that if chats, calls, and music are your priorities, the Packtalk Pro will not disappoint. I wish my phone sounded this clear when I called my parents! Cardo wraps the core product up with some neat features. You can control the device with voice commands so you never need to remove your hands from the handlebar. Cardo also decided to go with a matte black aesthetic so the device blends in with just about any helmet.

Other goodies include a magnetic mount, IP67 water resistance, Bluetooth 5.2, and an FM Radio for when your phone doesn’t have a connection to the outside world. One feature I wasn’t sold on at first was the Packtalk Pro’s automatic on-and-off feature. The communicator uses its systems to detect when your helmet is picked up at the beginning of a ride and set down at the end of one. It’ll then turn itself on and off seamlessly. I thought that such a feature wouldn’t matter because how hard is it to press a power button? Well, I have to admit that it’s super nice to just pick up my helmet, hear the boot-up sound, and go on my ride.

The Headliner

A lot of what you read here could be gotten in other helmet communicator systems. For example, the $549 Sena 50C has mesh communication, Harman Kardon sound, and then something that Cardo doesn’t offer in the form of a 4K camera. That Sena device also supports a private group of 24 riders, which is more than Cardo’s current maximum of 15 riders.

Something that Sena won’t do is notify your loved one when you crash. The Cardo Packtalk Pro uses sensors to measure acceleration, deceleration, impacts, velocity, and G-forces. The device uses this data to detect when you’ve crashed. Cardo says it conducted comprehensive crash testing as well as trials with thousands of motorcyclists from the everyday rider to police officers, some of which have crashed their rides. The result of this testing has revealed that the Cardo Packtalk Pro’s crash detection is 95 percent effective above 35 mph and around 85 percent under 35 mph.

Further, based on Cardo’s testing, the Packtalk Pro can detect crashes your iPhone won’t. When Cardo crash-tested its headsets, it also crash-tested iPhones at the same time. It found that the phones rarely detected motorcycle crashes. Why? Cardo believes the issue lies in how Apple programmed its crash detection. The iPhone is looking for a car crash, which results in different sounds and forces than a motorcycle crash. You aren’t going to get launched over the handlebars of a car or skid down the road after a car crash.

Here’s how Cardo’s crash detection works. The device is constantly reading your ride’s telematics. When the Packtalk Pro detects a crash, it sends a minute of data, plus data after the event, to the cloud to be analyzed. If the cloud concludes that you’ve been in a crash, it sends a notification to the emergency contact you stored on the cloud. They will get notified that you may have crashed and the exact coordinates where it happened.

The cloud takes a minute to analyze data so it can determine whether you’ve crashed or just hit a massive pothole. Since you’ll keep on riding after hitting a pothole, it’ll know not to send the crash message. If the device gets confused and decides to send the alert, anyway, you can cancel it so you don’t give your significant other a heart attack.

What’s great about this is that if you wreck on a country road, you may not have to wait forever for a local to come by and maybe discover you. Instead, your significant other can get on the horn and get someone out to you.

Cardo says the features of the Cardo Packtalk Pro pair well with its Riser app. This app gives you turn-by-turn directions, challenges, group rides, offline maps, ride statistics, and more. Riser is also a bit of a social media app and riders can chart out great riding roads for others to find. Pair Riser with a Cardo communicator and your riding experience can become a bit of a game. If you’re a Luddite like me, you can ride without Riser and still have a great time.

Quirks

I’ve discovered two major quirks with the Cardo Packtalk Pro during my time. One of these doesn’t make a ton of sense to me, while Cardo is thinking of how to improve the other.

Earlier, I noted that the Cardo Packtalk Pro has voice controls. These work great, when you can remember them. The problem is that the voice commands are super specific. For example, skipping to the next song requires you to say “Hey Cardo, next track!” If you say “Hey Cardo, next song” or “Hey Cardo, skip track,” nothing happens. Likewise, if you say “Hey Cardo, pause music,” nothing happens. You have to say “Hey Cardo, music off.” It’s the same deal with other functions. The communicator will ignore you if you say “hey Cardo, answer call.”

Ideally, Cardo should program the device to listen for similar commands, not exact wording. Sometimes I have to blurt out five or so commands before getting the right one and that gets distracting. Even worse is trying to control other apps through the Cardo. I haven’t been able to get Google Assistant to work properly through the unit. The communicator also doesn’t appear to be able to answer calls from social media apps.

You’ve also probably realized another issue. The crash detection is dependent on a cellular data connection and on your contact paying attention. So, crash detection will not work when you’re in the true middle of nowhere. I’m the worst person at checking texts, as Stephen Walter Gossin certainly knows. Cardo knows this, and it’s looking into a future possibility where your Cardo device could notify emergency services directly.

Unfortunately, the cellular connection is currently a hardware limitation. Cardo believes it is possible to have a satellite-based system, but that would likely require a subscription. Another limitation of crash detection is that it’s not tuned to work for off-road riding. Thankfully, you can turn crash detection off when you decide to get dirty.

Finally, my test unit, which was a prototype, had some issues pairing to both my phone and a beta version of the Cardo Connect app. Some device restarts and fiddling with the pairing procedure fixed whatever was going on. Everything has worked flawlessly ever since. If you encounter an issue, I bet working through basic troubleshooting should get you through.

Pimp Out Your Helmet

If you can live with those quirks, I think you’ll like the Cardo Packtalk Pro. It’s one of those products that just delivers everything it says on the tin. Cardo even says you get 13 hours of battery out of the system and my testing suggests it’s pretty much on point.

Even if the crash detection isn’t something you want, Cardo does sell a range of communicators from the $104 Bluetooth-based Spirit to the $319 Packtalk Neo, which gets you mesh communication and smaller JBL speakers.

If you want to have a little fun, Cardo says it’s giving a Packtalk Pro away for free. You can enter to win it by downloading the Riser app and logging 400 miles of riding by June 17. The winner gets a Packtalk Pro. Second place gets a Packtalk Edge and ten additional winners get a year of Riser Pro for free.

So, we arrive back at our original question. Is this worth $459? The closest competition comes from the Sena 50R, which offers mesh communication and quality sound for $359, but no crash detection. So, you have to ask yourself if the redundancy of a helmet that can help you out after a crash is worth an extra $100. I love the idea of being able to notify my wife of trouble, even if I can’t do it myself.

If you want to pimp out your helmet, Cardo Packtalk Pro units are expected to begin shipping on July 7 for the United States. Should you buy one of these, I think you’ll be happy with it. I was satisfied enough to add upgrades to a Packtalk Bold I had sitting around. My wife will use it when she joins me on rides this summer.