Monday Q&A: Sena SMH-10 vs. Cardo Scala Rider G4

My Sena SMH-10 Review remains the most popular post or review on my blog, and I get a lot of questions about it, about the device I used to replace it (the Cardo Scala Rider G4) and motorcycle headsets in general. Since I just recently got another email asking about it, now seems like a good time to examine the Sena SMH-1o vs. the Cardo Scala Rider G4 as today’s Monday Q&A.

Thoughts on the Sena SMH-10

I get a lot of questions about the Sena SMH-1o, how I use it, etc. – so I’ll try to summarize my most frequent Q&As here:

How often do you take the transmitter off the helmet mount unit?

We took the transmitters off the helmet mount unit most times when we charged the units. On the trip from Boston to the southern tip of South America, we took them off most days – until they broke for good in Mexico. Prior to that, we rode with these headsets for about 6 months. I can only guess at how often we took them off the helmet mounts – maybe 50 times, more or less?

I have a few huge quibbles with this design, still. For those of you who are just reading about this for the first time, the tab that holds the headset into the mount broke off on Day 15 of my Boston to Ushuaia trip. At that point, the transmitter could no longer stay attached to the headset mount (unless we did something permanent with some sort of glue or sealant), but even prior to that, we’d been having problems with the pins on the transmitter unit lining up with the mounting points on the helmet. See my full writeup for details and pictures.

And as a note – I was unwilling to permanently attach the Sena SMH-1o headset to the mount unit because the mounting units kept dying on me – the wiring kept shorting out, necessitating their replacement. So if I permanently mounted the transmitter to the headset unit, it was only a matter of time before the headset unit needed to be replaced again and I would have been totally out of luck in using these motorcycle headsets.

We take the Cardo Scala Rider G4 headsets out of the mount with similar frequency, and their design has stood up FAR better than the Sena SMH-1o in terms of durability and mounting.

Thoughts on the Cardo Scala Rider G4

How is the Cardo Scala Rider G4 holding up in terms of durability and use?

I get a lot of questions about how I like the Cardo Scala Rider G4, and how it has held up on the trip. I’ve gotta say that I’ve overall been VERY happy with the Cardo Scala Rider G4 motorcycle headset. I need to do a full review for the Cardo Scala Rider G4, and I will soon, but for now suffice it to say that I’m aware of only one flaw for this headset unit: it’s not waterproof. At least, the version *I* have isn’t waterproof, and many motorcyclists I know have encountered this problem. If you go to Cardo’s website now, it says: “scala rider G4 is waterproof, dustproof and certified to meet IP67 standards.”

This was not the case, however, when I bought the thing. When we ride in the rain, we find that one of the headsets has a problem with the microphone. The microphone gets quieter and quieter until the other rider can no longer hear the person with the borked microphone. The person with the busted microphone can still hear the other rider, so it’s sort of a one-way conversation.

So Person A can both speak and hear. Person B can hear, but not speak. We’ve tested the headsets on different helmet mounts, with other audio sources, etc. – it’s just a quirk of our headsets. After the headsets dry out (usually the next day) the audio is fine on both ends and the microphone is fully functional. We attribute this to the fact that the Cardo Scala Rider G4 headsets *used* to be certified “weather resistant” instead of waterproof, so the ones we have aren’t fully sealed.

Unfortunately, we know people whose problems with these headsets not being waterproof have been more drastic. One Canadian couple that we met in Argentina had their Cardo Scala Rider G4 headsets die on them after a bad rainstorm and they never started working again. They had to ride without headsets for the rest of their trip. Kay and I fully take riding with headsets for granted, and would have done whatever possible to replace them as we feel they’re absolutely essential for our style of riding.

But if Cardo has fixed the Scala Rider G4 so that it is now completely waterproof, as their website indicates, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this system. The only other problem I’ve had with it is that the speaker in one of the ears eventually shorted out. So I’ve replaced the headset mount once, compared with the 3 times I had to replace the headset mount for the Sena SMH-1o with less usage.

Comparing the Sena SMH-1o motorcycle headset to the Cardo Scala Rider G4 motorcycle headset

To date, we’ve used the Cardo Scala Rider G4 headsets for probably around… 1,000 hours, or so, if I had to guess. I imagine we used the Sena SMH-10 headsets for around 300 hours before they finally died for good. That in itself speaks for the durability of the Cardo Scala Rider G4 compared to the Sena SMH-1o – there’s just no excuse for a motorcycle headset this expensive to die utterly in such a short timeframe.

In terms of audio quality – the Sena SMH-1o has better speakers. My music sounded better in the Sena headset, and the Cardo Scala Rider G4 speakers get “blown” (scratchy and tinny from the volume being up loud) with relatively few hours of use. We both ride with custom molded earplugs to protect our hearing, and can hear the headsets over the earplugs, except at highway speeds – then it can be difficult to make out individual words over the noise.

However, the Cardo Scala Rider G4 has one HUGE advantage over the Sena SMH-1o – the noise cancellation is GOOD and actually WORKS. We noticed immediately with the Cardo Scala Rider G4 that our helmets were so much quieter without the added wind noise of the Sena SMH-10 being constantly on. Vox didn’t work as well on the Sena SMH-10, so we’d gotten into the habit of leaving the intercom channel on so we could communicate quickly if emergency need arose. Vox works well on the G4 – only occasionally ignoring short one-word replies (yes, yeah, yep) and occasionally cutting off the beginning of a response.

But the helmet noise (or lack thereof) with Cardo Scala Rider G4 vox enabled and its effective noise cancellation even when the other party IS speaking made a huge, huge difference in helmet environment. We were much more relaxed when riding with the G4 – and we hadn’t even noticed the noise in the Sena SMH-10 until we switched. The greatly reduced background noise reduced fatigue over long days and enabled us to focus more easily in technically challenging situations where concentration was required. For this reason alone, I would recommend to anyone riding with a Sena SMH-1o motorcycle headset to switch immediately to a Cardo Scala Rider G4 and feel the difference.

The only other thing worth noting about the units is that I really prefer the jog dial in the Sena SMH-1o to the buttons in the Cardo Scala Rider G4. Sometimes when you’re trying to change inputs or connect to the other headset, you have to feel around a bit for the button. That didn’t happen with the Sena’s jog dial – it’s a great feature. Unfortunately, the SMH10 doesn’t stack up well overall, so I can’t recommend it.

So overall – I’d firmly recommend the Cardo Scala Rider G4 – especially now that it appears they’ve resolved the waterproofing issues. The Sena SMH-1o isn’t quite “there yet.” I like the concept, but their design seems poorly-conceived to me, and I’ve had durability issues with both the transmitter units and with the headset units.

Finally, Sena’s customer service has been spotty – I had one great experience with their customer service, and then one poor one. A Sena rep reached out to me last summer and asked if I’d be willing to try the headset again, as they’d made improvements – but then never sent me a new headset to try and never followed up to make it right. I view the Sena as a very expensive (failed) experiment and will firmly recommend the Cardo Scala Rider G4 instead.