Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this as a Christmas present for my boyfriend in 2016 because we have a 1990's BMW that has a tape player and a CD player in the trunk but no way to plug in or Bluetooth our phones to listen to Pandora or audio books and it was pretty annoying, especially on long car trips. I am a huge believer in Amazon reviews and my family actually jokes that I can't buy anything without reading reviews for two hours, so as you would expect from that, I did a LOT of research before buying this transmitter. Out of the many that I looked at, this one had easily the best reviews, and was actually very reasonably priced. Years ago I had purchased one for about the same price at a gas station while on a road trip. That one ended up being pretty cheap and junky and didn't work very well so I was really hesitant to get another one, but I am so happy I ended up with this one! First of all, it's very convenient that instead of sitting directly against the cigarette lighter it actually has the flexible neck so that it can be moved around slightly to face in a certain direction. The neck isn't quite as pliable as I was expecting it to be so it only really sticks well in 2-3 positions. That doesn't affect my use at all but I thought I'd mention it in case someone was trying to use it in a specific area. It is quite sturdy though, and we haven't had any issues with it weakening or sagging from the lighter port. I also really appreciated that it has a USB port in the base so that I can plug my phone in to charge it while I'm using the transmitter. That wasn't something I had thought to look for, but now I see how inconvenient it would have been had it not had it because we only have one cigarette lighter port in the car. Apparently it also works to plug a flash drive with music on it and it will play them but I have yet to try that feature. The screen is definitely bright enough to see easily, but it's not so bright that it makes it uncomfortable to drive in the car at night. I have had a car charger with a very bright blue LED light on it and I had to put electrical tape over the bulb so it didn't distract me from driving at night so it was a real relief that this one doesn't have that issue. It's pretty cool that it actually shows you the battery level of your car battery right on the screen too! I didn't understand why it had a battery emblem since it doesn't run on batteries, but after checking the manual I was really impressed by that feature as well. Buying just a battery level checking device on Amazon isn't cheap so it's pretty cool that it's built in. As far as actually using it, I was almost shocked by how easy it was to pair with both my Samsung Galaxy S6 and my boyfriend's iPhone. We didn't even have to open up the little manual. Upon plugging it into the lighter port it lit up immediately and without pressing any buttons on the transmitter I was able to scan for it on my phone and it appeared immediately as an available device and paired up without an issue. And now any time we get in the car and the transmitter turns on it automatically pairs to whomever has their Bluetooth on so quickly and easily! After pairing I turned on Pandora on my phone so that I could tell if it was working or not and then started changing the transmit channel to try to find one that wasn't already a radio station. At first I was really irritated and thought it wasn't going to work because my car radio would never stop on any of the channels that I chose on the transmitter, but then I realized that I needed to change it from Auto Tuning Mode to Manual Tuning Mode so that I could go up on the car stereo one decimal point at a time, and that solved the problem completely. I was able to easily choose a station on both my stereo and the transmitter and the Pandora I had on my phone came through perfectly clearly. I have noticed that it is definitely clearer on some stations than others, so make sure to play around with it a bit if you're noticing static. Fortunately for us, even when we noticed a little bit of static when there was no music playing we really couldn't hear it at all through the songs or audio books. It sounds minimal but I was so excited when the directional buttons on the transmitter were able to change skip to the next song on Pandora! It says they're mostly for use for when you plug a flash drive in, but that it will work for some apps, and fortunately Pandora is one of them! I've really only used the hands-free calling a few times but I did notice that I did have to talk a little bit louder than I normally would to reach the microphone. That may be partly due to the location of the cigarette lighter port in my car though. That said, I didn't have any issues at all hearing the person on the phone and there was no static, they just said that my voice was a little quiet. So it's still perfectly useable. Lastly, I have yet to use it because the Bluetooth works so well, but it's amazing that it also comes with an AUX cord so that if you have an MP3 player or something that doesn't have Bluetooth capabilities you can still use the AUX cord to plug it in and play that music through the FM to the car speakers also. It also says in the manual that if you have an AUX plug in on your car stereo you could also go the reverse way and Bluetooth your phone to the transmitter then actually plug the AUX cord into the port instead of using the FM transmit function. If I had an AUX cord port I could see that being amazingly convenient and you'd surely get a really nice, clear sound from that method too. In summary, I am pretty much blown away by all features this has and how well it works. I am so pleased that I ended up buying this one and I would honestly recommend it to anyone.