Five FM iPod Transmitters Reviewed

An anonymous reader writes "If you want to listen to your iPod or other audio player in your car, but you don't have a cassette deck or a swanky I.C.E. system, then the answer is to transmit the music over FM to the car's radio. HEXUS.lifestyle reviews five FM transmitters for the iPod and friends, investigating how well these devices cope with broadcasting music over a 2 meter-or-so radius. Some readers will be aware that it's been less than a year since these became legal in the UK, so the majority of iPodding Brits have only recently discovered that they can tune into their MP3 collection on the road."

Comments

Nice

[scuba_steve_1]

> The five products reviewed all have backlit LCD screens, a radio bandwidth of 88.1 to 107.9MHz and switch off automatically about 60 seconds after the audio signal stops.

Very nice! (seriously)

I bought a unit that did NOT turn off after the audio signal stopped and I frequently forgot to turn it off manually...which resulted in the batteries being dead 90% of the time. Whatever unit that you buy, I suggest looking for one that has this critical feature.

Also, if you live in a populated area, make sure that you get one that has a broadcast frequency is FULLY tunable...not just selectable between a handful of discrete values. I live in DC and you are hard pressed to find an unoccupied slice of frequency.

Belkin

[QBasicer]

I personally have the Belkin one, and I hate it. It has horrible transmission and I have a hard time when it's more then 1 foot away from the antenna. There's been times when I've touched my radio's antenna to the unit, and still got nothing better than the FM station in the next city over.

Not in major cities

[Templar]

I live in NYC. There are no unused frequencies. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. There were a few before the FCC relaxed rules on small stations a couple of years ago. Now there's nothing left.

I used to use these devices (of all brands), but in the last 2 years or so they have become completely, absolutely, 100% useless in NYC, and I'm sure it's the same in other major cities.

And when I finally broke down and hardwired it, I was amazed at the difference in sound quality, and to this day wonder why I didn't do this years ago.

Re:Not in major cities

[steronz]

Wiring the iPod output directly to the aux inputs on the head unit is by far the best route, but consumers need to do their research before they buy a car and/or an iPod planning on doing this. My wife has a 2005 Corolla with a 6 disc in-dash CD changer, and there is no aux input. I can't replace the head unit because it's all proprietary wiring that is dependent on several other systems. After talking to a few car stereo places, it seems like this is increasingly becoming the norm for auto makers. For us, an FM transmitter was the only feasible option, and not a very good one at that, as we live in DC and it's hard to find a free channel.

Listening to neighboring cars

[dpbsmith]

I occasionally find it amusing to tune my car radio to FM 87.9, which (in the U. S.) is the default setting for most of these FM transmitter gadgets. I commute on Route 128 in Massachusetts so there is plenty of company, and more often than not there is an audible signal on 87.9.

Mostly it seems to be people listening to Howard Stern on Sirius Satellite Radio, but you also get a sampling of other satellite stations and (most likely) iPods.

The signal will usually be audible for the better part of a minute. Oddly enough, I've never managed to identify the car doing the transmission. You'd think you could tell from the positions of the cars around you and the strength of the signal, but I can't.

I discovered this because I have an iPod FM transmitter, set for 87.9 myself (after much experimentation I was never able to find any less-used channel).

What seems perverse that the signals from other cars' transmitters are not only strong enough to hear when my transmitter is off, they are strong enough to produce annoying an audible interference when my own transmitter, inside the car, is on. You'd think a transmitter two feet from the radio would totally overpower that must be at least forty feet away with two car body's worth of shielding in between, but no.