Cobra 75 All Road "Wireless" AM/FM CB Radio--New

[DanW]

Just saw this new AM/FM CB radio.  Looks like Cobra finally replaced the venerable 75 all in the mic unit, which is a bit of a legend in the Jeep community.

Anyone tried one of these yet?  I've got a Bearcat CM760 all in the hand unit that works well, but I may upgrade to this unit for the FM.  Of course my Midland MXT575 is my preferred way to communicate in my Jeep, I keep a CB for highway use and to talk to Jeeps who don't have GMRS, of which there are still many.

I'd love to see Randy  (Aka: NotARubicon) do a review of this.  It appears to have some interesting features.

Chime in if you've seen one in the wild.  I'd love to hear thoughts!

[KAF6045]

Based on the images at Cobra's web site, this new version puts a lot more into the "interface box". The old 75 did have pretty much everything in the handset, and just a small box with the power, antenna, and handset connections (and maybe the final amp taking a low power signal from handset to the 4W allowed power). The new one looks to have most of the circuitry in somewhat larger box, and just put the speaker/microphone, controls/display into the handset -- looking more like my antique Standard Radio [Marantz period, pre-merger with Vertex, then Yaesu, then Motorola -- Vertex seems to jump more than fleas on a dog] 2m/70cm dual-band.

The "wireless" is that it has BlueTooth which supports pairing with headset or a wrist (or steering wheel?) worn PTT button.

[DanW]

11 minutes ago, KAF6045 said:

Based on the images at Cobra's web site, this new version puts a lot more into the "interface box". The old 75 did have pretty much everything in the handset, and just a small box with the power, antenna, and handset connections (and maybe the final amp taking a low power signal from handset to the 4W allowed power). The new one looks to have most of the circuitry in somewhat larger box, and just put the speaker/microphone, controls/display into the handset -- looking more like my antique Standard Radio [Marantz period, pre-merger with Vertex, then Yaesu, then Motorola -- Vertex seems to jump more than fleas on a dog] 2m/70cm dual-band.

The "wireless" is that it has BlueTooth which supports pairing with headset or a wrist (or steering wheel?) worn PTT button.

It looks like it also wirelessly pairs with the box.  The power cord looks like just a USB.  Interesting.

[KAF6045]

3 hours ago, DanW said:

It looks like it also wirelessly pairs with the box.  The power cord looks like just a USB.  Interesting.

Both the handset and the box need a power connection (the box provides a USB port for the handset). The box has traditional fused wire for vehicle battery. But, yeah... since the handset can be powered from any /other/ USB port (including via the lighter socket adapter) it must be using some other (bluetooth or ISM) signal to get to the box.

[WRYZ715]

A bit late to this thread but I couldn't resist adding a few comments on the 75 All Road.

The 75 All Road has two parts.  The Handset and the Black Box.

The Handset contains all of the user interface functions like an LCD, buttons, PTT, microphone and speaker.

The Black Box contains the actual CB transceiver as well as the weather radio receiver.

The Handset talks to the BlackBox through Bluetooth.  All of the RX and TX audio plus control channel functions are handled by the Bluetooth link between the handset and black box.  This design was intentional to help solve a real world problem of installing radio's into vehicles.  The predecessor to the 75 All Road was indeed the 75WXST.  The 75 WXST was also designed to help improve the installation experience for Jeeps in particular.  However the 75WXST had many short falls and was long over due for a replacement. 

In comes the 75 All Road that took the lessons learned from the 75WXST and went much, much further by making the user interface wireless to the actual radio transceiver offering greater flexibility in mounting the Handset anywhere inside the vehicle where there's a USB power port available.   Install the Black Box where ever it makes the most sense which does require the usual effort of mounting and wiring to a power source plus making the connection to a high performance CB antenna etc..  But the fun part is the last step where the Handset is simply plugged into a nearby USB power port, push the power button on top of the handset and you have a working, high performance, CB radio! 

The Internet ad's for the 75 All Road do splash out the Bluetooth feature but usually fail to capture the real intention for using Bluetooth as a means to wirelessly remoting the Handset.  Instead, the marketing calls out support for connecting to a third party Bluetooth headset like BlueParrott in particular.  That level of Bluetooth connectivity does have it's place like for the motorcyclist but beyond that, eh...  I'd rather just use the Handset to communicate but to each his own and of course it always depends on the installation requirements and the buyers end goal for the radio!

What other cool features in the 75 All Road?  Excellent receiver and transmitter audio frequency response.  In addition, there's a real deal DSP (Digital Signal Processing) IC for both the receive and transmit audio paths.  The other goal for the 75 All Road was to improve speech intelligibility to the greatest extent possible.  On the receive side that means increasing the signal to noise ratio to hear more of the other stations voice and lowering the noise level.  In the transmit direction, lowering the background noise in the car or cabin means the person on the receiving end should hear your voice much clearer!  It's a communications radio and that part of it has to work really, really well or what's the point? 

What else?  Adding FM to the mix.  Just about all other countries that support CB radio operation adopted FM decades ago.  For some reason, the USA needed a bit more time to get there but now it's a reality and here we are.  So what is FM good for?  I think FM would work well for road trips where there are two or more vehicles in a caravan.  FM would help cut down the background noise generated by more distant stations.  Also, if there's a band opening on CB, operating in FM really helps to prevent interference from skip stations if your use case is just local communications.  When the band does open up, I'll head for the SSB portion of the CB band and run the sideband rig for some DX fun!

I've heard the complaint about FM interfering with AM stations and my comment on that is YES it will!  Operating mixed modes on a channelized radio is handled by moving to another clear channel if the one you want is in use!  What's the big deal?  Before FM, CB was still a mixed.  AM and SSB.  Same issues for the potential of interference.  And the solution is the same, move to a clear channel to operate.

Last comment, I do have a 75 All Road in my car so I write with some experience on this radio.  While the receiver audio from the handset sounds really good to me, I prefer to use an external speaker that's connected to the Black Box.  Then set the audio route for Black box only.  The sound performance form a decent communications speaker directly connected to the black box improves the experience even more!

Have fun!