Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Does Well If You Have No Alternative, January 16, 2007
As someone else already noted, there are better methods of listening to your MP3 player in your car, such as through the tape transmitter. For those of us who don't have it, though, this is a sufficiently apt substitute.
First, whoever said that there are 8 presets must be thinking of some other device. You only have 3 presets here, but you define them yourself from the whole FM range, an you can always deviate from them. Hence, this thing has an advantage over, say, the iTrip because you can easily surf between three stations if the one you're listening to now starts getting static.
Second, I find it powerful enough in most situations. I live in Boston, and drive around it often enough. Downtown, most stations will give you a small amount of interference, and that is probably the best you will get. Drive around the suburbs, though, and you can easily find around 3 stations that will play almost as well as your CD player in terms of quality.
The secret to this is to set your iPod volume somewhere around the middle to upper two-thirds of its capacity. If you set it to the maximum, all bass lines will be completely distorted. Set it to the middle, though, and you'll have rather crisp audio, although you will have to compensate for the lost volume by turning up the car radio. Hardly anything to complain about, though.
My two complaints with this device are these:
First, the marked price is far too high. You can find a much cheaper device on eBay, or even in the Amazon marketplace. I paid around $20 for it, plus delivery.
Second, some types of music sound distorted even at medium volumes on a lot of the stations. I have in mind the Waltz of the Snowflakes from the Nutcracker when I write this. Beside it, just about every song I played sounded clean, although sometimes a given station would encounter pockets of interference.
Given that a more powerful transmitter would probably end up messing up the radio reception of neighboring cars, I'm prone to think that this is an inherent problem to all FM transmitters. I think this is one of the better ones, though, because of its preset options, its ability to scan the whole FM range, the fact that it doesn't drain your iPod's battery, and the fact that you can manipulate your iPod volume on it for better performance. The iTrip can't do three of these. You will, of course, have to sit down in your car and look for usable stations manually, .2 by .2, but ultimately, and if you have no other option available, I think you will find this device to do a good job. Just do yourself a favor, and find a cheaper source.
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115 of 128 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Weak FM Output and Poor Audio, September 18, 2006
I have owned this iPod FM transmitter for about 11 months and have used it while driving thousands of miles through many FM radio markets. In urban areas this unit is not useable, because, despite the availability of the three FM presets, you can't find open FM frequencies in urban areas, and if you do, the unit's FM modulator is not strong enough to overcome adjacent channel interference from city FM radio powerhouses, and typical poor car stereo FM tuner performance (selectivity).
If you live in the country this unit's FM performance is just fine, unless of course you regularly travel to a nearby urban area.
Also, my unit "overdeviates"--the iPpod audio is distorted on loud passages when hooked up to my Dodge Durango with the factory stereo installed. When the FM transmitter is hooked to my Subaru's top-of-the-line McIntosh stereo, the audio is good.
I believe this product is overpriced, and should be sold with a caveat: Not useable in and around major cities.
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23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best FM transmitter available by far, March 3, 2007
It's only three stars now, because the Monster iCarPlay 200 wireless is a much better solution. It finds stations you could not find with the iCarPlay Plus, which I stopped using because it was just more hassle than fun to use driving in Los Angeles. Below is my original review of the iCarPlay Plus, before the "200" model came out:
*******
I have used the Griffin and Belkin FM transmitters, and the Monster is the only one that is useful for me driving around Los Angeles, where almost all of the available FM stations are in use. The Monster has a lot less static and locks onto the station a lot better than the other two. It is good to have the three pre-sets on teh Monster ... that are easy to set. I need the three pre-sets bacause as you drive, one station gets noisy (as you get closer to the transmitter of the real owner of that frequency) and you need to change to another. It is a hassle to change the station on the radio and also change the station on the Monster, but that is life with an FM transmitter. It is definitely an imperfect solution. (If you have a cassette tape player in your car, use the Sony cassette adapter instead. I never tried the Monster cassette adapter.) For people who drive shorter distances or who don't have as many FM station broadcasting nearby, the other brands might be ok.
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