Wireless CarPlay & Android Auto Adaptor

Do you use your phone as a GPS? Wish you can read and reply to SMS messages handsfree while driving? Want to listen to your favourite songs on Spotify through your car speakers? If you answered yes to any of the above, you will probably be keen to use Apple’s Carplay or Android Auto to achieve these tasks. I for one was a full convert to Android Auto while driving around in Perth Australia and having my family constantly sending me Whatapp messages while I’m driving. Being able to use the big screen of the car instead of the phones tiny screen to navigate and being able to reply to messages on the go was great.

I drive a Kia Rio in Australia which supports Android Auto. Unfortunately, it only support wired Android Auto, i.e. you need to run a USB C cable from the car’s USB port to the phone. This isn’t much of a problem since I’m the only one driving the car, and I’m really not bothered by a cable hanging across the dashboard. But this became an issue when I came back to Singapore and have to share the family car with my wife who uses an iPhone. Now I need a USB C to Ligtning cable to connect my wife’s iphone and a USB -C to USB-C cable to connect mine. Besides the inconvenience of having to keep swapping cables, the cables themselve were becoming an eyesore. I was also concerned that the frequent swapping of cable would wear out the USB-C port of the car. So what’s the solution to this problem? The answer is Go Wireless. 

I went about looking for an adaptor that can let me and my wife connect to the car without the need to use cables. And luckily, I managed to find something that fits the bill.  It’s called the CarlinKit 5.0 CarPlay Android Auto Wireless Adapter. I believe this is a newer version as some adaptors I found worked either for Carplay or Android Auto, but not both, So it was great to find one that can do both. Below are some of my first impressions of the product

Size

Was quite happy that the adaptor was pretty small so it was quite incomspicous in the car except for the blinking light to show that it’s working. 

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Setup

The setup was surprisingly easy, though instructions could have been better.To get the device to work, you need to do 3 things. I’ve “borrowed” the pictures from the vendor since their pictures look much better than anything I could have photographed myself.

1.Connect the device to your car:

Do note that not all USB ports can  be used for data connections. My car only had one port, There were 2 other USB ports that were just for charging devices. So make sure you find the 

correct port USB port . .