Customer Reviews

Griffin AutoPilot for iPod

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Good
- sounds much better then the FM transmitter I used with my old car (didn't have an AUX input).
- Basic controls (Play/Pause, Forward, Back) easy to reach, no need to fiddle with the ipod while I'm driving!
- Lighted controls easy to find at night at a glance.
- 5 Volt charger (future proof). Most in car chargers are 12 volts (left over from FireWire) 12 Volt charging will no longer be supported starting with the iPhone 3G. This should work with the new batch of iPods that are said to be released latter this month.
-Uses line out on the Doc connector (no need to crank the volume on the iPod). Has Hi/Low output switch (Hi = line level, low = headphone level)
- Price. 1/3 the price of an after market interface for the Honda stereo (and it is 12V) and 1/8 the price of the rip-off Honda iLink interface (12 volts again).

Not so good
- While charging the light fades between bright, dim and back. A bit distracting in the corner of my eye. Since the colour changes (red - no iPod attached, amber - charging, green - charged) they don't need the disco light show.

If you have a car stereo with an AUX input this is just what you need to get your iPod playing in the car.

I emailed Griffin asking if they had something like this for the iphone 3g and they told me they had tested it and it worked perfectly. I ordered it and they were right! It works great. The only issue is it complains that its not iphone compatible but it charges the unit and plays the music thru the audio out perfectly. I also am not detecting any serious cell phone signal issues.

So if you want a fairly compact charger and audio out solution (you must have some sort of audio in on your car stereo, even a cassette adapter will work) then this is perfect. I also use the buttons to pause and change tracks which I thought for sure I would not. Turns out its a lot easier to press the buttons on the charger than on my iphone.

Short version: it works. It charges the 4g iPod nano, the line-out works great, as do the pause/play, skip/scan forward/reverse controls and it pauses playback when you shut your car off!!

Full review:
Nothing on the package of the AutoPilot that I received from amazon.com ($30.85 shipped when I ordered it) indicates compatibility with the iPod nano 4G. Only 1G to 3G is listed. However, it works completely with the iPod nano 4G. So if you are buying this in store don't worry about what it says on the package. It works. However, don't buy it in store because in store it will probably be $50+tax. If you can stand the wait, buy it from Amazon for more than $20 less. But, hey, it's your money - do what you want!

The AutoPilot comes with the adaptor and a short (about 3 foot) mini-jack audio patch cable. The cable isn't particularly thick, so if you require half-inch think audio cables this isn't for you. However, if you care about the sound quality instead of the thickness of the cable, this will do fine. ;^) I'm not using the audio cable because we have an audio input in our Matrix via an adaptor box installed behind the dash that has a cable already plugged into it, and changing the cable would involve taking the dash apart. It, incidentally, is thicker then the provide one. Thank goodness!

The adaptor has a round pause/play button in the middle, surrounded by a glowing ring, and skip/scan back and forward controls as the outer ring on the left and right sides respectively. That is, the entire left side of the outer ring is back and entire right side of the outer ring is forward. Press and release to skip. Hold to scan. The controls work great and are easy to use blind, though, as I tested this tonight, the controls themselves are not lighted. Only the power ring around the pause/play button is lit. However that works fine once you know that inside the ring is pause/play and outside of the ring is skip/scan. I do have to say that the controls feel a little light to the touch, such that it could result in accidental track changes, though I haven't had it long enough to know if it's actually a problem and it didn't happen in my test.

There is also a small switch that sets the adaptor's audio output to "Lo" or "Hi". I believe that the "Lo" setting is used with FM transmitters, but don't quote me on it. What I can tell you with certainty is that with a line-in input you are going to want to set it to "Hi", otherwise the output volume is too low and sound quality is poor (or perhaps just low volume - I didn't test it extensively). Switched to "Hi" the volume is good/normal. In my brief test I did not detect any static or clipping. The sound quality was excellent, or at least as excellent as my factory car stereo is capable of being. I used it both sitting with the car engine off, as well as driving around town. It performed flawlessly. Note that mine shipped with the switch set to "Lo" so you will want to check the setting of this switch.

Another thing to note about this design is that if you have it right side up with "skip back" on the left, then the audio cable is coming out of the upper right corner. You probably won't want to flip it over to have it coming out the left side, as then the controls would be backward. Just something to keep in mind.

Now for the killer feature that I was hoping for and the AutoPilot didn't fail me: when you shut off your car it pauses your iPod! I can't reiterate enough just how great that feature is. I have this on my (crappy) FM transmitter that I use in our other car and while that transmitter is pretty terrible, I live with it in part because of this feature, which is just really, really wonderful. Note that it works even though power gets shut off pretty instantly to the outlet. If you haven't had this feature before it is something you'll have to get use to because you are probably in the habit of immediately hitting the pause control on your iPod after powering off the car. If you do that with this gizmo you'll actually start it playing again! Trust me, though, you'll get use to it, and you'll like it - or else!

When the adapter is receiving power and no iPod is connected, the light ring glows red. When you plug in an iPod that needs charging, it will slowly pulse a... err I'm forgetting the color (maybe a light blue???) It isn't overly bright, but it is pulsing. The slow pulsing doesn't bother me, but I imagine that there might be some for whom they'd wish it wouldn't pulse. When the iPod is fully charged it glows steadily (in theory - in my test I didn't have time for it to charge to full capacity.)

The controls work well and I find them pretty handy because, unlike the attached iPod, these controls are always in the same place. How useful they are may depend on the location of your outlet. In our Matrix it's pretty perfectly located about midway up the dash just to the right of the steering wheel. They will prove even more useful for my iPod touch.

Another thing worth noting is that this adapter eliminates the cable clutter that we had with our "SiK imp" solution. That (piece of junk) had both audio and power cables coming out of the dock connector. Moreover it had a short length of audio cable to which we had to plug the cable going into the car, and it wasn't infrequently the case the the audio cable got pulled out. With the AutoPilot the audio cable plugs into the adapter, and then a single cable leads from the adaptor to the iPod. This is a huge improvement. I was able to push almost all of the audio cable through the back of the cubby that we have it running out of, and so it pretty much has just disappeared. The AutoPilot is a big upgrade for us when it comes to cable clutter.

One last thing. Shortly after testing the AutoPilot out I ended up turning of the "shake to shuffle" feature of the iPod nano 4G. The new nano is so light that I bumped the cable and the nano fell out of the cubby I had it sitting in and landed on the carpet. This resulted in triggering shake to shuffle and I ended up going from a great Bob Dylan album to a great, but not exactly what I wanted, Raffi tune. Ouch. What a completely useless new feature!

This is a great little device, and not just for iPod Touches. I use it with my iPod 5G, I am able to hide the iPod inside my armrest compartment where it is out of sight. Only the subtle cigarette-lighter sized control is visible. I use this with a cassette adapter (no aux jack in my car) and the sound quality is great. I also find the controls more convenient that fumbling for my iPod, the AutoPilot controls are always in the same place on the dash! Granted, the usefulness of this item will depend greatly on where your cigarette lighter is located, so consider that before buying. Another factor to consider is that if your lighter is very tightly recessed, the AutoPilot may not fit well as the control head is a larger diameter than the socket itself. However, even if you can't easily reach the AutoPilot controls this is still a very good combo charge/input connector and I highly recommend it.
Note: If you have an old iPod that recharged by FireWire, this will NOT recharge it. I tried with my old 3G iPod (15Gb) and it wouldn't charge. Griffin does not claim that it will charge the older iPods, so this is not a knock against them.

Griffin has always done a great job with their products. The AutoPilot has been an amazing asset to my car. Before, it was just the AUX IN and I would have to adjust the sound through the IPOD and the sound system of the car. With this, I can adjust the volume just through my sound system and it sounds amazing. I've always tried the radio transmitter ones and they just don't sound as good compared to the AUX IN. Charging the IPOD at the same thing and being able to hide it away too is a great thing. Also, the capability of changing songs is a lot easier instead of trying to find it.

I bought this product for my iPhone, and even though it isn't officially certified, it still works perfectly. When I first plug it in, the iphone alerts me that "this accessory wasn't made for an iphone - would you like to turn on airplane mode?" I just hit no and everything works great. It charges fine and provides and line-out port so I can use the Sony CPA-9C cassette adapter to play music through the car's speakers. This would also be good for any car that has an auxiliary line-in port because the autopilot includes the necessary double-ended 3.5mm connecting cable. Although I could see the play/pause/skip/backward controls being redundant for a regular ipod, they are great for an ipod touch or iphone since you won't have to wake it up and fumble with the touch screen one-handed while driving.

I highly recommend this for anyone who wants to charge and play music from their ipod touch or iphone in their car.

I purchased this initially for use with an 80 GB "classic" iPod. Today, I use it exclusively with my iPhone. I travel constantly for work, and have found that the device works much better in some rental cars than my own (2006 Saab). On my car, I have a constant alternator hum, which is indicative of poor cable shielding/insulation. If I disconnect everything and just have an audio cable going from the iPhone to the AUX input of my car, the problem goes away. I've had to press "No" to the compatibility question every time I turn on the car -- as others have stated.

Major complaints as follows:
- Power plug is very cheap and tends to automatically wiggle itself out of the power socket (extremely annoying -- causes music to automatically pause, etc). Has happened in my car and several rental cars;
- Cheap cable causes alternator hum;
- After a 1.5 years of very heavy use, I now have a slight short in the cable that connects to the phone itself (my reason to be on Amazon today). This causes intermittent loss of the right channel playing any sound.

Just not robust enough for a frequent user in my opinion, and pretty dang expensive for what it actually is. However, it's one of only two products on the market that get rid of all the clutter and offer just one cable to the iPhone for both audio and power. Very frustrating to the buyer!

My car has one of those "cigarette lighter" power jacks between the two front seats, and a mini-stereo input jack underneath the JBL stereo to hook up an external MP3 player. This product is ideal with my iPod nano 4G 16GB. I reach down and push the Griffin autopilot button that sits over the power jack to start an iPod song playing or to stop/pause. When the car turns off, the song stops playing automatically so I start in the same place on the same song the next time I start the car. I push the front or back arrows to advance to the next song or go back to the previous one. If I hold down the forward or back arrows, it fast forwards or fast reverses through the song I'm listening to. I never have to worry about my iPod battery, it's always charged.

One audio cable runs to the stereo. The other cable runs to my iPod which stays out-of-sight in the storage console between the front two seats, where I can pull it out conveniently if I need to access a menu for something - which is rare. Most of the time I keep my iPod set to shuffle by song (or occasionally by album), then I select a particular playlist and click play. I may go weeks without actually getting my iPod out to control it with anything other than the Griffin autopilot to start and stop random shuffle of my whole music collection. The cable that connects to the iPod uses the special "blade" ipod connection rather than the mini-stereo jack, which is nice since it means I control volume only with my stereo controls, and the output volume is unaffected by the volume setting on my iPod nano 4G). Cables are just about right with length to spare, but not so much there's any loose cables getting in the way or getting snagged.

I got this at the local Apple Store. I have used this for almost a year now and it's been ideal with no headaches. Exactly what I was looking for all in one unit, and a great value for what you get. It's innovative quality well-designed products like this that make me a big fan of Griffin.

My new Prius has an AUX feature in the radio to play my iPod or iPhone 4, so I thought I'd test Griffin Technology's new AutoPilot out. It's a well crafted device that charges, controls, and plays your iPod or iPhone at the same time. It plugs into your 12v power socket or cigarette lighter. Easy.

It comes with the plug part and a separate audio plug/line in that goes into your iPod or iPhone. Once I had the plug inserted, it glowed red, meaning, my iPhone needed charging, it goes green when it's done; I liked that. On top are arrows, showing me that I had the option to click to change tracks. My only issue is that on my Prius, the plugs are hidden from view. But when i plugged it into my wife's car, with it's plug in in the dash, it worked great. I vote for a longer access point for us that have cars with hidden power plugs...

The sound was clear, and no matter what interference I found around me, it didn't bother at all my iPhone. And I arrived with my iPhone fully charged. That's so helpful. The device has a year warranty, and Griffin has a helpful tech support department ready for you phone calls. None of this use some silly chart to figure it out yourself. It's not designed for an iPad, that requires a 2.1 amp power supply. Griffin makes another device for that. I have read on Griffin's support area that if I use one of Apple's bumper cases it's not made to accommodate this charger, so maybe a modification will happen in the future.

I am a previous user of the Belkin charger/AUX device that had a built in volume control. I used it for my iPod Touch and it worked perfectly. Unfortunately the iPhone 3G was not compatible, though it would play fine it would indicate that the charger was not fit for the device and it would not charge it as well.

THANKFULLY!! I read the reviews for this device and found that this will work for my iPhone 3G. Picked this up at my local department store and everything works as expected. There is an indication that the iPhone is not compatible once you plug it in but just ignore the message and everything works (charging and music). No static, no problems!! A+++