ipod accessories
One of my geeky gifts this Christmas was this Monster iCarPlay Wireless FM Transmitter. With it, you can plug in your iPod in the car’s 12V outlet (cigarette lighter), and play songs through your radio using FM frequencies. It also charges your iPod while you’re using it.
My opinion? I don’t know if I got a bad one, or if the product is just crap, but it stopped working after a day. I hooked it up Wednesday night and tested it out. There was some static coming through on the FM station, but it did work. I tried it again Thursday morning and still got static due to not being able to find a weak enough FM frequency. Tried it again Thursday afternoon and it was dead. The power light didn’t come on, so we assumed a fuse had blown in my car. We tested it in my husbands car and got the same result.
I’m taking it back, but I don’t know if I’ll replace it, because I wasn’t that impressed with the sound quality it gave me. I’m definitely going to look into an alternative.
A while back, I bought a really cool Hello Kitty charge-and-FM-play transmitter for $30. I don’t recommend it though - it stopped working after a while, and the design didn’t allow for terribly easy access to the touch wheel. (I now have a video iPod with a click wheel, but I think it would have been the same situation there.) It’s hard to find charge-and-FM-play ones for cheap, though. When I bought my new car a couple of months ago, it had a cassette player as well as a CD player, and it was much cheaper to use one of those cassettes with the wire coming out and a regular lighter charger. The sound is much better too, I hate when somebody else’s FM transmitter gets too close and they drown out the radio station I’m listening to!
Happy New Years!
[…] Yesterday, my husband and I returned my non-working iPod thingie and exchanged it for a Belkim version of the same thing. It works, but the sound quality is horrific. Seeing as how I’ve tried 2 of these now (what the heck are they called, anyway? iPod fm frequency player thingamajigs?) and both are not the best sound, I’m giving it up. When we get home from vacation I’m going to see if I can just have something wired in my stereo instead. […]
Your absolutely right - The Monster play product is complete CRAP !!!
I bought one of those for my Ipod it was about $60.00 or so, and I NEVER got a clear signal, I spent most of my time jumping from station to station to coinside it with a frequency with the “least” amount of static as they ALL had static.
I rook that Monster back !! I am now direct wired and could not be happier !