Customer Ratings & Reviews

I thought maybe the bad reviews were just from iPhone users. I have a Samsung Galaxy S9. Setup was smooth enough. Unfortunately, the mic does not always pick up on Hey Google. When it does, sometimes it just sits there thinking. When it occaisionally responds with a tone to indicate that it is listening, it is about 70% actually hearing the command or hearing it correctly. The volume is way lower than the music volume, so if you aren't listening to music loud, you will not be able to hear it. I'm giving it a couple more days. It's a great concept that honestly I don't know why the phone itself doesn't try do automatically. Right now it's more frustrating than helpful. It's like have an extremely lame Google Home in your car.

Most of the time this works fine. It brings (mostly) hands-free communication to my car, which unfortunately lacks Android Auto. My complaints are two: 1) it occasionally won't connect to the car, without explanation. Turning the car off and restarting may fix it, or it may take several minutes to connect (longest so far was about 7 minutes). 2) Android integration is lacking in some ways. For example, if you ask it what is on your schedule for the afternoon, it will respond that it can't do that unless you unlock your phone--which completely defeats the purpose of the device. I know this is not an Anker issue--it is a an Android issue. It just makes the device somewhat less useful than I had hoped it would be. 3.5 stars (rounded up).

The Roav gives me my Google Assistant while I'm driving, and my car is a 2008, which doesn't have the latest tech built in. I can tell "her" (Google) to text someone from my contacts. I can ask her to route me to a location. Etc. Anything you can do with Google assistant. It utilizes the accessory function of the car radio, so the sound is way better than if I used the assistant on my phone in the speaker mode. On top of all the functions I use the assistant for, there are a couple USB ports on the side of the Roav so you don't lose the charging ability from the DC outlet (cigarette lighter).

We bought 2. After installation, they played music, phone and the Google assistant usually worked by hitting the button. However, Google voice activation was sporadic for a few days, then stopped completely for both. One auto connected when the vehicle was turned on for a few weeks, then had to be selected manually in the Bluetooth menu on the phone. The second had to be manually connected every time. After a few weeks, one wouldn't connect at all. Sometimes our phones (1 Google pixel 3 and 1 iPhone X) would say they were connected after manual connection, but nothing worked. We reset the device and forgot the connection as per customer service advice at least a dozen times with bother devices, but that didn't help. Lest you think it's operator error, or our cars or phones: we've had 2 Blackberry stereo gateways that worked flawlessly for years (both got stolen). Unfortunately, they are no longer made and hard to find in eBay. We also use Bluetooth headsets and speakers with no problems. It's just roav bolts that don't work. By this time, our Best Buy warranty was up, so I called customer service. They ran through what was wrong and what we had done and said we had gotten 2 faulty devices. They apologized profusely, said faulty devices were uncommon and 2 out of 2 even more so. They said to email for an exchange. The email we got was the most burdensome I have ever received in 30 years of returns. I copied it below so you can see for yourself: "Thank you for contacting ROAV customer support. Sorry to learn about the issue with your device! Please be assured we always stand behind our products and want to make this right for you. To get started, could you please let us know the exact phone model, operating system, and APP version detail? In order to apply for our 12-month warranty that covers any quality or manufacturing related issues, please provide the following information: - A screenshot or pdf of the invoice from your Amazon purchase from AnkerDirect (or a picture of the receipt if you bought it from a store) - Your current shipping address - The serial number (SN) located on the device - A short video depicting the problem (behavior, beeps, and indicator when it stops working) . Thank you so much for your patience. Looking forward to getting you taken care of as soon as possible!" It took me 45 minutes to get all of that together, all for 2 out of 2 defective devices. I hope the next ones work! I'm tempted to just return them for refund but don't know if another alternative for phones with no earphone jack.

90% of the time I like having this. Sometimes it will respond like it is heard everything correctly and fail to do the action it was told. Happens most often with music commands. Does pick up voice very well in the car over music and other noises.

Works great. Only complaint is that it is sometimes to hard to use with iOS because you need to have google assistant always open in the current version. Hopefully newer updates will fix this.

I've used this product for the Google Assistant and the competing Echo Auto for Alexa and I wanted this to be great. I hate using Alexa, but the Echo Auto at least hears commands and responds to them quickly. The ROAV is SO slow to respond that I often start moving on to something else by the time it does respond, and the whole thing becomes more distracting and dangerous than using my phone. The only reason I'm giving this a fair is because if your car didn't have bluetooth or if your phone didn't support hands-free use of the Google Assistant, it may be sort of useful, but as it is, I'm better off just scrapping this and using my phone.

Bought this to use as an alternative to apple/android car play. Doesn’t reply / sends nee messages via google Assistant. Can make calls if you ask to dial the exact phone number. 3 stars only because it charges the phone as well.

Installed this device on my 2009 Chevy HHR via auxiliary jack. Installation and pairing to my Samsung was easy. Sound was crisp through my stereo, it responded to my commands without having to shout, and the Google Assistant was quite impressive. Bad news is that this device quit working after about a week. Lights would illuminate, but would no longer respond to my voice. Made multiple attempts, over a few days, to reset both the Anker ROAV and my Samsung. It would no longer respond. I returned it to the store. I've read that this device was a bit "buggy"... Seems it needs a bit more development.

I wanted to love this thing. Google Assistant in my car? Yes, please! However, the fact that it is little more than a bluetooth passthrough to your phone hampers this, badly. Sometimes it seems like it is picking up OK Google commands better than my phone would, other times not so much. In order for the noise cancelling features to work properly, you need to connect via cable. In my case, this solution negates BT features, such as media controls via my head unit, track information display, and album art. Since the noise cancelling feature doesn't seem to work all that well, anyhow, it seems like a waste to trade useful features for broken features. The charger works well, so there is that.

WORKS FAIRLY WELL, GREAT FOR TIME, WEATHER, NAVIGATION, AND MANY OTHER GREAT USES , YOU CAN ALSO USE IT TO KEEP YOUR CELL PHONE CHARGED.

Definitely hears you better than your phone but sometimes still doesn't hear you. But when it does work which is a majority of the the time it works flawlessly.

As soon i hear about this product, i felt amazing. really makes smart car when it works. But sometimes there is lag in responding but still a good product if your car doesnt come with andriod auto etc.

Amazing to have easy access to Assistant and quality bluetooth audio in the car. Relies on your phone's assistant, but not a bad thing. Only complaint is a common one with bluetooth devices, the phone audio channel is always very low quality (for compatibility reasons), and I wish assistant spoke over the media channel instead of the phone channel and lowered the music's volume, so using it doesn't interrupt the music. Maybe in a future firmware update (which is automatic and powered by the phone.) If you use assistant and like using your phone for music already, this is a great device for your car.

Love the hands off aspect of driving and being able to ask google for whatever you can think of, navigation, where's the closest gas station/restaurant/weather/how far to such and such/ call answering/texts/gmails etc...however, this product still needs some tweaking to make it perfect for it takes a certain phrasing to get google to give the proper answer or the correct answer.

This is an excellent product. If this work for voice control navigation I will give 5 star.

Great concept, and I love the idea of having a google device plugged into my cigarette lighter, instead of relying on my phone to hear me (although technically my phone can do pretty much the same things the Bolt can). However, it just doesn’t work as well as you’d imagine, because the device is full of glitches and bugs. With my Galaxy S10, the Bolt pairs to bluetooth without issue, but it rarely actually functions. I ask google to play a song, and the Bolt responds “playing ‘song’ by ‘artist’” but never actually begins playing the song. Then, I ask a second time, and it may start playing right away. Other times, I give up in frustration after a few tries, only to have the song or playist that I asked for start randomly playing 5 minutes later. Oddly enough, if I start the song from opening the app on my phone, it almost always plays through the device and to the car’s speakers just fine (of course, that pretty much defeats the purpose of the Bolt, since I could buy a bluetooth receiver for far less). It’s almost like the Bolt understands the voice commands but has issues relaying them to the phone. I’m not sure how many of the Bolt’s issues are software/firmware based and can be fixed with a patch, vs what may be a defect with the hardware. I really regret the purchase though, since I’ve owned the device for 3 months and it doesn’t seem like a patch is forthcoming. The device is so unreliable in it’s basic functionality, that I’d be better off trying my luck just using Google Assistant directly through the phone while I drive. Or, if I want to have a separate device, I may try Amazon’s version for Alexa instead and see if I have better luck.

This is great to keep you safe while on the road. Easy to answer calls and talk while driving. Great for playing music from Spotify.

It's an okay gadget. the mic is better than I expected, as it can pickup my "okay google" over music, so that's a plus. But it takes a "moment" to respond to the ok google command. Some times when I've said ok google, it's taken more than 15-20 seconds to let me know it's listening. That's a little too long if all you're trying to do is something trivial like changing the song. Or trying to start navigation in the face of an impending wrong exit. Other times it responds faster. It's has responded within a second couple of times. but I'd say 5 seconds on average. that's the response time. I wish it was near instant like the actual google home products.

I brought two of these, one for my son. His van is a old model with no Bluetooth. This helped him have Bluetooth.