Customer Reviews

VR3 VRFM8R WMA/MP3 Wireless Modulator, 12 Volt, Black with Remote

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I've had this gismo for about 1 week. I noticed after my 45 min dirve to work, that it got very hot. I called customer support and they said it was normal for the unit to get hot. Anyway a few days later, the fues blew. I replaced it, and after about 10 min it blew again.

Besides the above issue, VRFM8W works great as described. I think the sound quality is good.

This product is great except the USB support stopped working. I used the device in several cars and the reception was quite good. There was a little hiss, but you can't hear it after you start the engine and my car is fairly quiet. It changes frequency at the lower end of the FM range so you can pick a spot where there is no interference. I found that the first spot was the best so I never had to adjust it. I used a preset on the FM radio so I could always jump to this frequency. This device is great for traveling when you rent a car.

At first, I relied on the USB port to play mp3s from a 250MB flash drive, but this eventually stopped working. Now it plays for a few minutes, makes some strange noises and stops playing. I tried the same mp3s that I first played on it to no avail. So now I use it to broadcast an mp3 player. This still works.

I bought the VRFM8W about a week ago and tested it out in 2 cars. The first test was in my Saturn with a Sony CDXGT300 player in the Clearwater, Florida area. I had significant interference on all the 14 stations in trying to tune in the transmitter (clicking mostly),...however I did get one that after 20 minutes of listening did not bother me as much and was acceptable for a "FM" station listen. If you are audio book listening,....it seems to be a bit more easier to deal with the lower fidelity than listening to a favorite song of course. Anyway next I tested it on a standard car am/fm radio in a toyota,....and it worked alot better. I did not have the clicking on the lower settings and was easy to listen to. It seems that my "nicer" radio with the electronics to pull in more stations works to well and causes more interference than the cheaper basic car radio when using the VRFM8W.

I would have loved for this thing to work -- it doesn't. On the strongest of the frequencies I could just barely hear the music through the static. On most of the frequencies I could hear nothing at all. Then I tried it on my wife's car, which is newer and has a far better sound system, and I couldn't get any signal on any of the frequencies.

Too bad -- I wanted to use my mp3 player in my car. Back it goes. If you buy this thing, just make sure you can return it for full refund.

I agree with NomDePlume. I had high hopes for this product as well. Even if it worked, sort of, I would have been happy but it didn't even do that. USB connection sucked, and the sound quality using the cord was awful. Customer service was even worse. Simply wasn't worth the money, and it wasn't even all that expensive. I'll just burn a disc while I'm returning mine for a refund.

I got one of these gizmos at a truck stop a while back and it mostly does what it's supposed to do.

The Pros:
-There are no batteries to mess with or worry about charging or replacing or going bad on you, and thus it's practically zero maintenance. As long as you've got easy access to a 12-volt socket, you're set.
-USB support is a PERFECT way to get music to these devices. No fuss, no muss, no hassling with special cables or music services and all that jazz. Just plug the flash drive you've already got floating in your pocket into your pc and dump your selected material to it. This feature is also great for podcasts or audio books, if you're the kind who doesn't mind manually managing them. You'll probably never worry about the storage space on your player, you can just buy a larger flash drive when the prices fall to a point you like.

The Cons:
-The audio input jack on mine gave out after a few months. I rarely used this feature, but it was nice when I wanted to borrow my wife's IPod for a long trip. The USB support still works, however, which is my primary method of using it.
-There is some interference on my unit. One channel will work fine for a while, then suddenly there will be a ton of buzz and static, or a radio station will suddenly overpower the little transmitter.
-THIS IS MY BIGGEST GRIPE : the player will only play songs from a memory stick in one order. This isn't a big deal if you're only interested in listening to something from a small set of files stored on your flash drive, like with podcasts. You just fast forward through the tracks till you find what you want to hear. However for large collections of music it makes the device mostly useless, unless you dump some random songs to your flash drive right before heading toward the car.

The simple addition of a working 'shuffle' button to the device and a little more quality control would have made it a nearly perfect solution for controlling what comes out of your car radio. As it is, it's a very practical solution for some applications, and a not very good way to listen to a large library of songs.

I had this item for one week and it broke. Replaced the fuse and it still wouldn't work. I'm waiting on a replacement from the manufacturer.

I was expecting more from this product. I used it for 2 weeks, It does not lose signal, works perfectly with my Manufacturer installed radio in my Corolla 2005 at New Jersey Area, But the sound fidelity is terrible, sounds more like AM(amplitude modulation) not even FM. I would recommend this product only if you don't care about the lower fidelity. Also, the USB takes an eternity to play the next song, At the beginning, I thought the device was broken until realized that's how it works.

Pros:
-Fill a niche that no other product does.

Cons:
-Sound quality is radio-only, not CD or mp3.
-Limited to 2GB file capacity (even though the manual sez unlimited!)
-Sensitive - have to unplug it when starting the car.
-Rude and surly tech support.

Summary - When someone else comes up with a replacement, this thing's going in the garbage.

I have owned this for about an year. It is almost dying! Here are some key observations:

[1] You have to experiment a bit with frequency. Once tuned, it has a sort of "break-in" period! It will perform better if you don't keep changing frequency often and dedicate a specific channel to mp3 listening. In my case 88.5 FM worked the best.

[2] You can achieve balanced and almost static free audio by playing with >| button on mp3 player and volume control on your car stereo. Read mp3 player's instruction booklet for more.

[3] Over the time (6 to 9 months), mp3 player developed loose contact problem. USB stick slides out just a little of a slot due to gravity-pull and road vibrations. You will end up pulling out and reinserting USB drive again and again. The ones with SD slot do better in this regard. I do not get loose contact problem with SD slot.

Also, the 6-position hinge becomes very very loose and will loose its ability to hold positions and will always dangle to the lowest position making display unreadable.

When it works, it is good, It does not offer you playlist capabilities with USB stick or SD card. If you own a full-featured mp3 player, you can edit playlist there. It is cheap. Medium to heavy users: Plan to buy a new one every six months to an year!