Customer Reviews

Griffin 7265-TRIPUNB iTrip Universal Play any MP3 Player On Your Car or Home Stereo

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Here's my opinion of the Griffin iTrip Universal. I have a 4th Gen iPod Nano, which I love. I looked at the "old" style of the iTrips specifically designed for Nano, but there was not a 4th Gen one out yet. I decided to go ahead and purchase the iTrip Universal, that way if someone was in my car with an MP3 player other than an iPod, it would still be able to be used. I was extremely excited once I received it and thought the charging mechanism (via USB) was brilliant since you wouldn't drain your iPod battery using it. However, the excitement quickly faded when I went to use it the first time. I charged it fully and a few days (4 days tops) later went to use it. It was completely dead. I had assumed I had done something wrong, since I hadn't used it yet. I recharged it later that day and used it the next day. I drive a fairly small car and have used FM transmitters before without issue. With the iTrip universal however, there are 2, maybe 3, places in my vehicle I can set my iPod/transmitter and have it transmit without a ton of static. I tried multiple frequencies and all had the same result. My trip to work is about 20 minutes, by the time I was there, the battery indicator had already dropped from 3 bars to 2. I didn't use it the next day, and when I went to pull it out to use it the following day - completely dead again. If I want to use it, I have to make sure I have had it plugged in to charge within the last couple of days or else it is dead and I can't use it. I gave it the benefit of the doubt, that maybe it had to charge and drain a few times in order for it to be able to have the battery operate at full capacity. I have had it coming up on 5 months now and see no improvement whatsoever. I plan to purchase a replacement (most likely the iTrip Auto for iPod). My only problem is that I will have this iTrip Universal that I spent good money on that does not work well, and I don't feel right about selling someone something that I find only works halfway.

I just wanted to let you know my review and tell you that while I love most Griffin products, I was/am highly, highly disappointed in the iTrip Universal. It will work, but not well, and I just can't give it a great recommendation like I had hoped to.

I've owned and used this product for close to a year now. Bought it as soon as it came out. That was a mistake. It is cute and is good in theory, but not in practice. Here's a quick summary after using it many times in many situations:

* Short shelf life for battery. To charge battery you must connect it to a USB port of computer. Good in theory. But after a charge, if you don't use it soon afterward, when you go to use it, the battery is dead and you need several hours to charge it up again. Who is going to keep it constantly attached to a USB port?

* Signal strength is weak. From back seat of minivan or sedan, static is present while music is playing unless you hold the iTrip just right. Have had several other transmitters that have much greater range. In a house, maximum unobstructed range is 15-20 feet.

* Cord to connect to headphone jack of music player is ridiculously short. Like 4 inches long. Why so short??!!

* Display is monochrome and very tiny. No backlighting. Battery strength indicator is too small.

They need to do a version 2 on this thing. The concept is good. I like how you can tune it to any FM frequency to broadcast, and how it turns on by itself when it detects a device, but it falls way short of the basic functionality of a good FM transmitter.

I have purchased the iTrip MP3 player basically to play in my stereo the music I have stored in my computer. If you find a clean FM frequency, the device will transmitter properly. However, some interference may remain depending on how the transmitter is placed (beside the computer or on it, for example). For this reason I found that the cord to connect to headphone jack of music player should be much longer. A longer cord may also improve reception.
The battery drops faster than what the seller says (about 4-6 hours). Moreover, it drops even without use.
All these drawbacks may make this device useless for use in your car, but it still worth for use at your home.

We've had this transmitter for about a month and we really like it. It does have it's faults thought, but they can be overcome.

1. As others have said, you need a longer cord. The one provided with it is much too short. Using a longer cord will improve it's reception significantly.
2. This device does not work though the cigarette adapter. This is a good thing for us because we can give it to my son and he can play his iPod from the back seat. This leaves the cigarette adapter free for when we need to use the GPS. So this turns out to be an advantage for us.
3. The battery doesn't last as long as the manufacturer says it does. I think we've gotten 4 hourse of use out of it at one time. Charging it is easy, but you have to remember to bring it inside the house and attach it to a computer!
4. You can hear a little bit of static with quiet music. This is not an issue with load music. The sound is clear and it wasn't difficult to find an open frequency, even in downtown Boston.

These issues aren't a disadvantage for us, but you want to consider them when purchasing.

I bought this to plug into a Laptop and send music from Pandora to a nearby HiFi system.

I needed to a longer audio cable to increase the signal level because the HiFi system for about 10 feet away. A 36" cable did the job. If you havent read this in other reviews, the audio cable also functions as the transmit antenna - so longer is better.

Unfortunately, the HiFi receiver does not have a squelch function, so when audio stops, the Griffin 7265 soon stops transmitting the RF signal, and the HiFi system then hisses white noise. Not a defect with the Griffin, just a defect in my application.

By the way, Pandora is a great web site for those of us who enjoy continuous background music taylored to our taste.

Battery life is not an issue in my use.

Ken

Purchased this item despite mostly mediocre reviews because I did not want to tie up a cig lighter/powerpoint for use with an XM radio unit. It turns out to be a lot of work for crappy results. Battery life at best was 6 or 7 hours for the first 5 charges and has been decreasing with every charge. As others have said you can't use provided jack and get any signal. Need to use a longer cord jack. You need to recharge every night. Get a powered unit along with a powerpoint splitter as this piece of crap should not even be marketed. Only plus is signal is on a par with other transmitters while you have power. Constantly taking it from vehicle to recharge means chance of losing or damaging it which would be a blessing to put owner out of misery of owning this worthless P.O.S.

I honestly have no idea how any one could have given this terrible product more than 2 stars. I'm not ruling out the chance that the rest of us have somehow purchased defective models, but I doubt thats the case.

The thing just plain doesn't work........at all. The design is cute and the set up is simple. It charged pretty quickly and and found the stations with out any hassle. Sadly though, all of those good qualities are over shadowed by the product's utter uselessness.

Within 30 seconds of choosing a station I realized that I had to hold the transmitter just right in oder to avoid an ear full of static. Normally holding it wouldn't have bothered me, but since I was DRIVING I kind of had my hands full. I can't believe a manufacturer could produce something of such poor quality. It doesn't do any thing that it advertises and like others have said, the back light is really dim and the buttons aren't very responsive.

It only adds insult to injury that places like Best Buy are selling this crap for upwards of 40 bucks. After 3 days of frustration mine is going right back to the store.

Please take your money elsewhere and don't waste your time on this garbage.

I bought this thinking that it was portable and chargeable.
The performance is terrible. I even tried using a longer headphone cord. Not worth the money at all.

I have had older versions of the iTrip for previous iPods and bought one of the newer iPod-specific models. I was very very disappointed by the performance of the new one.

Then I borrowed this version from a friend of mine.

I was AMAZED with how much better this is than even the newest iPod specific models. The catch? I think it uses the connection cord as an extension of the antenna. With the short cable, performance wasn't that great, but when we connected the device to it with a long cable, performance improved dramatically! You could tell by moving the cord around and find the best position for the best reception. I was able to drive between two major media markets and not have any interference problems or have to change the stations.

That said, it's still a FM transmitter that has to stay within FCC regs. It doesn't provide anything near CD quality, but it's great for listening to podcasts and audio books and such.

Very disappointed in the iTrip Universal player. Never could get it to work right so returned it. Tried numerous times and numerous stations and could never get a clear signal. Music from iPod always came through with lots of static in car. I would not recommend this (at least for vehicle use).