SIRIUS ST4-TK1 Starmate 4 Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio Receiver with Car Kit

by Sirius Satellite Radio

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 0.6 x 4.9 x 1.9 inches ; 2.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000IS7WRI
• Item model number: ST4TK1
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)

Product Description

SIRIUS Starmate 4 combines all of the exciting and easy-to-use features of the Starmate family, and offers up a simple, sleek design as well as SIRIUS Universal docking capability. It has a large widescreen LCD, and the slim unit is easily portable. Artist name, song titles, and up to five lines of text are displayed on the screen. The Starmate 4 replays up to 44 minutes of content and can pause, rewind, and fast forward.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good product, bad reception, July 15, 2007

By 

J. Romero (Elizabeth, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SIRIUS ST4-TK1 Starmate 4 Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio Receiver with Car Kit (Electronics)

Before I had this one I had the Original Sportster. The reception was great and I rarely lost signal. Because it was bigger it was easier to take off the cradle.
My radio was stolen from the car so I ran out and got the Starmate thinking it would take up less space. Once I hooked it up I realized it took just about the same and if I chose to hang it off the A/C vents the hooks were so long that it would just look too far out. You have to use a little bit of force to remove the unit of the cradle (I don't want it stolen again) which normally ends up moving the mount off place. The suction cup however is very strong.
The Starmate seems to have worse wireless FM as I get almost no signal into my car's factory radio. I went to a local professional to have the FM antenna cable routed outside and next to my car antenna to see if that improved things but no luck. By the way, I had to figure out that cable was an FM antenna because strangely enough it wasn't in any of the diagrams or the list of parts included in the box. I just ordered the FM Direct Adapter from Amazon which is how I ended up here. Hopefully that will improve things.
One final complaint I have is that I miss the classic tuner knob. I thought buttons would be cooler but they are so hard to push that I end up moving the mount off place.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good product. However, you better shell out for the accessories., November 30, 2007

By 

C. Knowles (Lehi, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SIRIUS ST4-TK1 Starmate 4 Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio Receiver with Car Kit (Electronics)

Alright so I decided to finally upgrade to the starmate 4 from the stratus. I'm happy with it. It does have some cool features like the pause, rewind, ffw abilities. As well as the memo feature so you know when your favorite song or band is on. Also, I love having more presets and more display information. The remote is nice but can prove to be more of a hassle since its IR meaning it takes a sec to work and its easy to mess up all your presets on accident. Overall the radio is great. Now the bad. The reason I knocked it a star is because it sold as a kit is a joke. In order to make it work you have to have a direct connection. I got a fm direct connector and it works great. Needed some antenna adapters to make it all work perfect though. Thank goodness I had the car cradle that came with the stratus. I'm not a fan of the suction cup or ac vent options. However the one I had happens to work great with it. Anyways thats my take on it. Overall I love it but sirius needs to rethink what their including with it. It would make the perfect product if they included what you actually need. Especially considering the fm transmitter isn't allowed by the FCC to be powerful enough without the direct connector.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, November 1, 2007

By 

media fan (Southern Cal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SIRIUS ST4-TK1 Starmate 4 Plug-and-Play Satellite Radio Receiver with Car Kit (Electronics)

I bought the Starmate 4 to repalce an older, larger unit. I had heard that the FM transmitter on the newer Starmates and Sportsters were useless (and that turned out to be true), but that didn't really matter to me because I hook it up directly to my car stereo via an aux input. However, I noticed right away after setup that the fidelity from the Starmate 4 wasn't as good-- it sounded tinny and lacking in bass. Thinking it was just my imagination, I then compared the sound from the Starmate 4, alternating with my car's FM radio and CD player, and then with my older Sirius unit-- and the Starmate 4 sounded lousy compared to all of them. Almost like an old transistor radio in comparison. Don't know about the new Sportster 4, so I am going back to an original Sportser or Replay, which on second thought isn't a whole lot bulkier.