ipod accessories

Before I write my review, I want to say that this is my first review here on Amazon.com. Well I guess I must be way out of the loop here as I just discovered this type of a device, a way of connecting audio devices to your car without the need for the conventional cassette car adapter. I've been looking at these things for a few days now and decided that I was going to go with the Belkin TuneCast II Mobile FM Transmitter from Best Buy.

I go there only to find they didn't have any, so I decided I'd get this one instead, which surprisingly, (at least not at the time of this review), wasn't listed on their web site, So before I left I bought along my Sony Walkman with a few tapes I love listening to so that I could test this thing out when I got it.

As the instructions say, insert the RadioPlay in to your cigarette lighter, connect the mini headphone jack in to your portable device, select the FM station you want the sound to come through, select the same FM channel on your RadioPlay and your good to go. Living here in Maine, USA there are no stations on 88.1, (I checked before I bought this and you should too).

There is an 88.3 which is clear as a bell but there is nothing coming in on 88.1, so I chose this as my default station, (I didn't test the others). Turning the sound all the way up on my Walkman I was able to hear it coming through the speakers, and boy is it cool! Using my CD player I was able to adjust the bass, treble and volume accordingly to get the best sound, and it's very good.

Some people complain you hear static noise coming from the speakers, while this is true, (it doesn't block this), it plays over the top of it and unless your playing a ballad or listening to speech, this won't be a problem, the static noise was quiet anyway, so for me it wasn't a big deal.

The sound highly depends on your car stereo setup, the clarity of the recording and I'm sure your audio device would have something to do with it. I do have an MP3 player but I didn't test this, I would probably say that if your MP3s are at 320Kbps, 44Kz Stereo, you could probably get it sounding at 128Kbps with a little less clarity. If you could get CD sound or close to it, you'll just hear a bit of static in the background, (particially with songs that don't have many instruments or as I said ealier, ballads / speech).

On the packaging, it doesn't state what the range is, so I'm not sure if for example, the person driving behind you could pick it up, they might be able to, but it probably wouldn't be all that clear, no big deal. Overall, this thing rocks, I can't wait to test this out with some other tapes and my MP3 player, absolutely well worth it!