Been a while since I've posted anything useful on the boards. Then again there's no guarantee that this post will be useful either but here goes.

The new Chatterbox X1 Slim is out and I got my grubby little hands on one for $210+tax on a group buy, supposedly one of the first shipments. I've yet to use it for group chat yet but I have taken it out for a couple hours with my tunes playing. Compared to the old Chatterbox X1 Bluetooth that I had, the new Slim is much smaller, less than 1/2 of the size.

The picture doesn't do it justice. It feels so much smaller than the original. Noticeable changes right off the bat are new ports on the back of the unit. Now all of the plugs are a standard 3.5mm like a headphone cable so you don't need to cut wires to use ear buds w/ your chatterbox now. The clip is also huge now. One of the biggest complaints about the old Chatterbox was that the clip was total junk. Now, the clip is nice and beefy and the unit isn't nearly as large so I don't imagine anyone will be losing their shiny new Slim due to a clip failure anytime soon. Note that the small piece that goes between the helmet liner is metal now instead of plastic. I've heard that some people are having problems mounting it on Scorpion EXO 1000s because of the lip on the bottom of the helmet. I'm only using an EXO 700 so I don't have experience w/ this. The larger clip is also slightly more difficult to attach/ remove your Slim from w/o looking. I find that slightly annoying but appreciate the security once it is on.

The mic and speakers are about the same size as the old chatterbox bits but the new speakers are louder and tinnier than the old ones.  The overall sound level of the whole unit is much louder as well. System beeps are louder and the volume range for bluetooth and channel chat are much higher. By this I mean that you can no longer reduce the volume until it gets so quiet that it's off. At a guess, I'd estimate that it's about 3 levels louder which can be quite annoying when you get a static blurb from the GMRS. Loud as make the beast with two backs! 

The loss of the volume buttons on top of the is a bit of a disappointment for me. I liked having dedicated volume control buttons and music control buttons. Instead, now the up arrow is volume up on short presses and long presses is "next song" in bluetooth mode. The same goes for "previous song" and the down button. This make going to your previous song a bit cumbersome depending on your music player because on mine, hitting "previous song" starts the song over first if it's not within the first 5 seconds so I have to do 2 long presses in a row which doesn't always work correctly.

But many people will appreciate that the new Slim has better compatibility options than the old X1. The new one works much better with phones that can play music than the old X1 did.

I've yet to test battery life. Overall I'm satisfied w/ the new Slim. Considering that I sold my old X1 for $200, I can't complain much.

I have the new cardo and the volume sucks.  Do you have any experience with one to compare?  Thx