This is a great little unit at a great little price.

I bought one of these transmitters from Amazon last week and to be honest I didn't expect much - but had a pleasant surprise.

First of all the unit was packed extremely well - very secure, nothing rattling around. Good start.
Once the unit was unpacked, I found the remote, a cable with 3.5mm stereo jacks; one end to plug into your unit and one for your MP3 player headphones output, walkman, etc. if you want.

There was also a spare fuse!! (excellent - who else supplies a spare fuse these days?)

Setting up the unit was simple too. I would advise anyone who is considering buying to set up your radio channel with the engine switched on (parked, of course!) because one or two channels will be noisy (electrical noise from the engine) as you search through, and your car radio/stereo volume set to the level you normally listen at.

I settled on the third channel I tried to tune in... around 87-88 MHz. Great sound - and in stereo too.

Controls include an equaliser (changes the tone coming from your transmitter - tinny, basey, etc..), volume control (again, if you want some advice, set the volume on the unit to a fairly low level - it is quite meaty!), track search up/down, channel up/down, channel lock, etc.

Most impressed with the remote control unit too: small, light, well set out, simple (we like simple!).

Note that you don't have to listen to your tracks in sequence if you don't want to either. There is a great function for selecting the track you would like to listen to (i.e. #234) without having to keep skipping forward/back. It also has a small but quite clear display too (but I wouldn't advise trying to read it whilst driving).

I have tried it with my 4Gb SD card and my 4 Gb USB flash-drive plugged in too..... excellent on both counts. No more piles of CD's clogging up the glove box!

I really like the fact that the unit has a hinge in the middle too - so that, if your utilities socket (or cigar lighter socket) is in an awkward place, the transmitter won't stick out. You can fold it out of the way.... which also means that it doesn't matter how long your USB flash-drive is either!

Great unit - highly recommended. Saves you having to buy a new stereo unit for the car if you just want to be able to play MP3's!

Almost Perfect, One Or Two Things To Improve Though...

The sheer weight of positive reviews is what led me to buy this transmitter and I'm more or less satisfied with it. There are a couple of things about it that bug me though, one that has been mentioned a lot and one that I haven't spotted anyone mention yet.

1) The quality is NEVER going to be perfect. I can get it really, really close but there's always a hiss in the background. This is not noticable on louder tracks but on the quieter ones you're going to hear it. This leads on to my other problem...

2) As it is oly connected to your iPod by the docing port on the bottom and not via the headphone jack on the top, you CANNOT adjust the volume of the track using the iPod dial. This is only a problem if you have a quieter track. If you boost the car stereo volume you're boosting the background hiss as well. If you could boost the iPod volume independantly this would cover it up slightly.

Having said all that, this is still a pretty good player. As others have said, it's really easy to set up. Just plug it in, drive around and find a frequency that worlks for you. I've found three different ones and stored them in the memory and have stored the same frequencies in the car stereo memory slots so I can easily change between the three if I need to.

To sum up, the audio quality is not perfect so if that's what you're after, you'd be better off looking into hard wiring a connection into your stereo, with FM you will always get a hiss. If, however, you don't mind the slight sound of radio then get this player.

Good but with niggles

I like these head units so much that I have bought 2 of them! They do everything they say they will very well. You even get an aerial adapter in the box so everything should be ready to go!

The only down side is that the instruction manual can be a bit hard to follow at times but once you have set up the AUX input for your ipod and got rid of the demo scrolling message you will not need to look at it again.

Also the volume control does the balance/tone settings and if you accidentally push the control instead of turning it, you have to go through all the settings to get back to change the volume. This took a bit of getting used to, but it's a niggle not a bad flaw.

If you can live with that then I would recommend this player. I have not had any problems with skipping or jumping on CDs. It goes loud without any distortion and sounds good. MP3s in folders are recognised and you can get the folder names scrolled as well as the mp3 titles when navigating through. If you have folders within folders only the mp3 folders are shown eg: 2diskalbumdisk1track1.mp3 will just show as disk1 in the folder menu, you will never see 2diskalbum.

I'm very happy with mine and for the price it is great value!

Top Class Seller and Top Class Gadget

I bought this and was a bit unsure as it seemed too cheap! Mad , I know. I had a new Ipod Shuffle but wanted to play it on my car stereo and I wanted to play the soundtrack of movies off my laptop over the house speakers and also the music I had downloaded too. This turned out to be the best little gadget ever! Easy to use, really easy in fact, and easy to keep charged, it charges itself from the cigarette lighter or from the USB while you are using it as both attachments come with it!! The sound is crystal clear , and it saves me having all those discs in the car and it means I do not end up listening to the same CD for weeks on end, lol!! The Royal Mail let me down and lost the first one sent out, I told the guys at Tecknet and I had a replacement the very next day! Service does not get better than that. Buy one, you will wonder how you managed to get this far without one. Kenny

Does what it says on the tin

Plugged in my MP3 tuned the frequency away to go, no problems at all. Very fast delivery with a letter explaining delivery charges, besides it's obvious before the order is placed. The playback quality is better if you use a USB memory stick instead of an analogue MP3 player input but very good either way. Just ordering one for my mum.

Difficult to Complain

It would be very difficult to complain about this little gizmo when it is so cheap.

I'm sure it does pretty much the same job as transmitters costing much more. It looks fairly cheap and plastic but it does the job. As has already been said you have to turn the volume of your player and also stereo up high and in the car there is the occasional loss of signal, but ut's still a good buy and very easy to set-up.

EXCELLENT VALUE

Does exactly what it says on packaging, works out of box. used to my archos excellent sound, recommend.

Ford Focus Sony player - check before ordering

We have a Ford Focus with a Ford/Sony radio in it, and this device will not work as there is not a suitable connector on the back of the radio. So before buying this device it,s worth just popping the radio out and checking.
CarAduioSecurity were good enough to accept that the device would not be suitable with this radio and adviced me to reject the delivery and they refunded half the p&p.
If you have probs getting the radio removal tools, then Torquesteer sell them for £10.

Awesome

Awesome player, easy to fit, sound quality superb, arrived within a couple of days from Carhifionline, highly recommended, all round excellent service and product!

Very good value for money

This stereo is very good for the money, although the user interface could have done with more work spent on it. For example, when playing back MP3s, it is much more useful to skip to the next album instead of skip 10 tracks (although albums can be selected through an awkward menu system). It looks like the company the made it let their software engineers design the interface without enough end-user testing.

Bluetooth connectivity works like a dream, although my nokia N70 had problems auto-connecting until a firmware upgrade (read: my phone had problems, not this stereo).

For anyone put off by the report that it can only handle 1GB memory cards / USB sticks, I can confirm it works perfectly fine with my 2GB SD cards, and suspect it will work up to the original 4GB FAT limit. (Only with standard SD cards, NOT using SD-HC)

Finding a 3.5mm AUX input jack on the front of the unit is a very pleasant addition also - why more manufacturers can't do this is a mystery - who wants to plug their external MP3 player into the back!

There are however some downsides, in my eyes:
1) There is no control output for an external amplifier (there are RCA outputs for a SUB and Amp though)
2) The stereo cannot be switched on with the ignition off (I got used to the feature on my OEM stereo whereby it would switch itself off after 30 minutes if you turned it on without the key in the ignition)
3) The removable face plate does not always make good contact when re-attached, hence the stereo appearing to switch off when going over a bump (I don't remove mine now)
4) No steering wheel stalk control inputs
5) No CD changer input (but fitting 6+ albums on 1 MP3 CD makes this a bit irrelevant)