E-Blue Mini Nova USB Bluetooth Adapter

Reviews: Networking

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Max Slowik
Beth
N/A
Sep. 30, 2008

Specifications

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Introduction

Laptops are so much the victims of feature creep, it makes custom-computer types die a little inside. Seriously, who needs a fingerprint reader!? Your laptop is made of plastic; if someone really wants that data, they'll get it. And, because they're naturally OEM machines, pinning down the real feature set is really just luck of the draw. What, then, happens when your pretty machine is missing a feature? And then desktops... how hard is it to piggy-back Bluetooth onto a wireless card? Still, most PCs just don't support it.

My laptop was one such unfortunate. When it came time for me to get my Skype on, I reached for my gaming headset, not my secksy Plantronics Discovery. So with my single, valuable ExpressCard slot all full, and the difficulty in swapping MiniPCIe wireless cards, I was left with the USB ports as my link to wirelessness.

This is no great place to be. USB Bluetooth adapters are long and likely to take hits on a laptop, even if you're smart and remember to unplug 'em before the laptop gets bagged. I know I'm not smart like that, which is why my laptop has one less working USB port than the day I bought it. But then, you don't have to wait too long before you see a tiny adapter show up on your local gadget news site. The devices are almost exclusively available in China and Taiwan, with US availability TBD.

So, when Brando showed up with this little widget by E-Blue, I was on it like a language pack at a Hong Kong rumor site.

First Impressions

The Mini Nova Bluetooth Adapter just fits in a USB port. It's merely a plug with a smoked transparent grip for your fingertips. Insertion meets a lot of resistance; the device is keenly designed to be hard to pull out accidentally, which in turn makes it tough to push in. [That's what she said.]

Don't get me wrong, the thing is insignificant. It's smaller than most USB connectors, let alone USB devices, but it's still a little big. In my mind's eye the Nova vanished inside the USB port, but it's really longer than that. It does stick out, a quarter of an inch or so. Enough for you to be able to extract it without a shim but still likely to catch on stuff if you're planning on adding it then forgetting about it.

I also kinda sorta hoped that it would light up. Because that would be informative, yeah, not because I'm a sucker for LEDs. Anyway, it don't.

A note on shipping: since you're not likely to find these at a brick-and-mortar, chances are that if you're buying one it'll ship to you from Asia. That's fine; freight on a 2 gram wireless adapter isn't going to kill you, and I spent less than thirty bucks all said and done. But, if you're in a time crunch, you'd have been better off if you'd bought one before you needed it. It took a month and a day to get here, and I didn't receive anything other than a receipt after placing the order.

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Page 1: Introduction, First Impressions
Page 2: Specifications, Testing
Page 3: Conclusion

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Headphones December 22, 2004

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2 User Comments

1 - Posted by GaryJohnson on October 1, 2008 - 12:12 pm

$30 and a month and a day? You can get one of these things from NewEgg for $20 in 3 days.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

2 - Posted by Kurtis on October 1, 2008 - 5:07 pm

Gary: Thanks for the link. I wouldn't be surprised if it's got the same guts with a slightly revised body. This review was written a while back and was just sitting in our posting queue, for what it's worth. :)

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