We’ve all seen the car commercials that list off their standard features, such as navigation, built-in applications, and Bluetooth. These features can make those who own an older car feel left out.
Since its creation, the FM radio has been installed in nearly every single car on the road today. The FM radio allows us to enjoy our favorite tunes, hear today’s weather and traffic conditions, as well as local news stories.
While FM radios haven’t changed much, the broadcasts that they send have. Many of today’s radio stations tend to constantly replay the same songs over-and-over again. Furthermore, for them to make money you have to listen to advertisements for five or ten minutes. This is the same whether it’s a car from 2000 or 2015.
New car owners have options, like connecting their smartphone to their car’s sound system to play Pandora, Spotify, or another popular music stream service. They could even load navigation on their device and listen to the turn-by-turn directions, or maybe load an audio book and listen to a dramatic story.
Even though it may not look as nice as a car from 2015, your old car can learn new tricks and join the crowd of listening to your smartphone through your car’s audio system. By tuning your car’s FM radio antenna to a certain frequency and plugging in your smartphone’s headphone jack to a transmitter, you too can listen to your favorite songs over-and-over again, commercial free.
Welcome to this review of the iClever in-car FM Transmitter. Throughout this review, we will take a brief look at the design, functionality and my final thoughts. Thank you to iClever for providing this product.
Design and Setup
The iClever FM transmitter is a modest device that converts a digital signal from your smartphone’s headphone jack into a FM transmission so your radio can tune to this transmission and play the sounds as it would with a normal radio station.
By plugging in the FM transmitter into your car’s cigarette lighter, the unit jumps to life and immediately begins to transmit an FM broadcast. With its three foot cable, the transmitter sits in the center of the cable and uses a red dot matrix screen to show its current FM frequency, which ranges through 88.1 – 107.9 (0.1 adjustments). Since most local FM channels range in the upper 90s and lower 100s, a channel in the upper 80s gives the best results.
On the other end of the 12V input is the 3.5mm headphone jack that connects to your device. It should be noted that when connecting this device to your smartphone, the smartphone will adjust the sound as if it were headphones; increase the sound to an appropriate level, but be warned that plugging in a set of earbuds or headphones will adjust the sound back to the last recorded sound setting. So please don’t blow your ears out.
Finally, set one of your preset FM channels to the frequency of your transmitter and you’re set!
Functionality
With the transmitter all setup and with the cable nicely tucked away, I connected my phone and began playing my stored music library.
Even over rough roads with a bump here and there, the music played flawlessly without any interference. The transmitter broadcast is strong enough to exit the car’s interior and be sent to the FM antenna on the outside.
I had the ability to adjust the volume through both my smartphone and car’s sound system and it sounded as if I had headphones on.
The FM transmitter also houses a full-sized USB port so you have the option of charging your smartphone while on the go or better yet charge it while navigating, which also plays through your sound system!
It doesn’t stop there, as the unit also supports hands-free calling. By using your smartphone as the microphone, the voice of the person on the other end of the call is played in your car giving you a crisp and clear projection of their voice.
Just like a radio station, the player’s signal is strong and crisp for music, navigation, or any other noises you may hear. If somebody had entered the car unannounced to the transmitter, they wouldn’t know if they were listening to a radio station or your phone.
My Final Thoughts
While this review may seem modest, it just so happens to be a modest product. Its easy, seamless setup gets you going quickly and never once did I run into problems. iClever sells this unit for $16 which is expensive for what it offers. I certainly enjoyed listening to my own music and phone calls through the car’s sound system, but unless you really dislike the radio, you may think twice on whether or not you need it.
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