 Dont Be Deceived |
| Review Date: March 13, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Erdem Demirkan, New York, USA |
| I picked up this product for my father s new car..But to be honest i m dissapointed so bad. On paper it seems so convenient and cheap, but in real life it doesnt work properly.First of all, yhe range of remote s very bad, you have to use remote very close to device.I used sd card to listen my mp3s, but sound quality awful, and although i tried all frequencies in my neighbourhood, but there s a always interference. |
It doesn't get much better than SoundFly!
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| Review Date: March 9, 2010 |
| Reviewer: JT, Los Angeles, CA |
I knew that iPods had FM transmitters and I have wanted one ever since I got my 1st generation Nano iPod. But I couldn't bring myself to spend more than $50 for one. I was holding out for the day cars would have a USB slot instead of a CD player. Imagine my excitement when I discovered FM transmitters that had USB and SD slots! I read through reviews on Amazon for the various models but finally decided to put SoundFly in my cart and wait for a good Christmas sale.
Knowing how much I wanted to play my iPod (yes, my 1st gen. ipod still works) in my car, my fiance finally just bought me an FM transmitter for Christmas - The Griffin iTrip. Not quite what I was looking for (only plays iPods), but after reading a very good review on Amazon with instructions on how to get the best sound out of it, I decided to give it a try. It worked great the first few days while I was driving in the Downtown Los Angeles area, but got increasingly bad in the following days and weeks, and even worse when I ventured out into the "greater LA area."
Luckily Amazon has a 30 day return policy. He was going to exchange it with a slightly older (or was it newer?) version Griffin iTrip. I suggested trying SoundFly instead. He read a number of good reviews but was hung up on whether it charges the ipod when plugged in (because the iTrip does this). I replied, "Who cares? If my iPod battery dies, I'll just plug in a USB or SD card which DOESN'T depend on battery power." Therein lies the beauty of the SoundFly's multiple ports :)
When I opened it up and saw the user manual, I was a little intimidated by how to work the buttons. There are only 5 buttons, but there are many combinations that yield different results (pressing and holding vs. just clicking the button vs. clicking different button combinations). So when I first plugged it into my car, I had the user manual ready in my free hand, armed for any user/technical difficulties. But there was no need to worry at all. 94.6 was what it displayed, so I tuned my radio to 94.6 and there was my music, playing perfect with no static, no fuss, no problems what so ever.
After my experience with the iTrip, I was skeptical that this perfection would last more than a week and outside of the Downtown LA area. So I waited, expecting it all to fall apart at any moment. 6 weeks and some 500 miles later, it still works so magnificently that I felt compelled to write my first product review. This is a truly awesome product!!!
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For those of you in the Los Angeles area I've driven with this device virtually everywhere in a 50 mile radius of downtown LA and on all the major freeways. To be fair, there are spots where minimal static can be heard in the background, especially if you're listening to a quiet song, but that happens with normal FM radio too (ie, under tunnels, by airports...). The test of all time, for me, is driving with it through Palos Verdes, where normal radio stations have problems transmitting or can't transmit at all... I had crystal clear music playing out of my SoundFly during the whole trip! :)
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Like it but could have gotten by with less
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| Review Date: March 8, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Mark S. Mom, Los Angeles, CA United States |
Because I live in LA I had a bit of trouble finding a non-broadcasting frequency. My car radio doesn't have the option to search incrementally. I ended up experimenting with different settings on the Soundfly and letting my radio find it. That worked. Luckily, I only seem to get a slight hum as I drive through certain areas.
The Soundfly does much more than I really need and the extra features are not simple to use. Once I got it set up though I found I could just use it as a plug-and-play. The basic playback is easy to use and also easy to see while I'm driving -- day or night. |
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| Review Date: March 7, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Danny E. Mayer, Pittsburgh pa |
| I've been using this unit in my company car since I can't change out the stereo and the car stereo doesn't have an audio input. This unit has a good sound and a lot of features for the price it is a good alternative to only listening to FM stations. I also like the fact that I can listen to Pandora radio from my blackberry storm through the audio input. The only thing I didn't like about the unit was the audio cord is only six inches long no problem I just purchased one from Radio Shack that was six feet long. And it doesn't remember the track number using an SD card when you power it off or unplug it. For the price this is a nice little unit I am impressed. |
Good piece of gear!
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| Review Date: March 7, 2010 |
| Reviewer: A. Crow, |
Bought one, it works very well with lots of options. Very sturdy, I tend to yank it out and toss it on the seat whenever I don't want to use it, and it has survived for over a year with no problem.
I wish you could select the song number directly, but you can only go forward and back, and jump to folders. No big deal.
I bought another one for my wife, she kept trying to sneak mine out of my car. I consider it a great deal for the price, sturdy construction, nice options, and fairly low profile.
Would buy it again, easily. |
Sounds great, but is somewhat fragile
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| Review Date: March 6, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Brian Marine, Poughkeepsie, NY |
This is the third MP3 car transmitter unit we have tried (sorry, I can't remember the other two models we returned), and it is by far the best. I only use it with an MP3 player, so I can't comment on its use with a flash drive/USB port. But connecting it to my Creative Zen V Plus player provided great results.
In particular, it provides the cleanest and clearest sound by far on whatever frequency we use. With similar units we tried previously, signals tended to fade in & out often, or there was intermittent interference or distortion ... but this almost never occurs with the Soundfly.
My only suggestion would be for Satechi to include a longer connector cable, because the one provided is only about 4 inches long, and so you cannot place the MP3 player on the tray between the front seats (making it awkward when needing to change settings, etc., in the MP3 player).
The unit is also very easy to use, nice to look at, offers a really nice remote control, and is much smaller in physical size that other units we've tried (making it much less obtrusive). However, that also turned out to be a bit of a problem.
At one point when trying to move the Soundfly from one car to another, in trying to remove it from the cigarette lighter the unit broke apart. Part of the reason for this may have been that we never use the lighters for anything else, and it was locked in there pretty good requiring a lot of force to remove it. But the unit's small, somewhat fragile design also made it difficult to grab on to and also may have contributed to the problem.
But to Satechi's credit, when I contacted them asking directly for a replacement (since Amazon would only have partially refunded my money if returned to them), their customer service rep Arthur promptly shipped out a replacement unit (at no charge) and also included a pre-paid return shipping label. This no-questions-asked, prompt customer service response is rare these days (in my experience, anyway), and was greatly appreciated.
We have also decided (and I recommend this) to buy a 2nd unit to use in our other car ... thereby alleviating the need to try and remove it once installed.
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great sound quality...
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| Review Date: March 4, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Coffee Lover, Los Angeles, CA |
| this is a great product. i love the sound quality of this thing. i do agree with other reviewers that hooking up the audio cable to mp3 or similar creates a slight sound distortion and slightly lessens the quality, but otherwise much better than others. direct usb or sd card does have a great sound quality. works super great in the Los Angeles, CA area! So i prefer this than any other fm transmitter. |
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| Review Date: March 1, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Jaymo, United States |
| Works very well and negates the need for a Boosteroo. The line in cord could be about 1 foot longer. |
Well worth the investment
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| Review Date: February 26, 2010 |
| Reviewer: B. Denis, Reno |
| For those of us wanting to avoid replacing the entertainment unit just to get USB connectivity, or for those of us not wanting to re-wire the entertainment unit to provide direct connectivity, this unit does a great job. Read the critiques about using it in downtown areas of busy cities but I don't have this issue here in Reno. Excellent product. |
Why only 1 star for this product which has so many positive reviews? Glad you asked.
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| Review Date: February 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: N. Pai, Seattle, Wa, USA |
I have been using this product for about an year, almost everyday. I liked it so much that when my first one was stolen by a car jacker at a gun point, I bought another one from Amazon. This little unit has lots of cool features and lot of people have posted 5 star and 4 star reviews. I do not disagree with them and you will get a better idea of how well the product works by reading the 4 and 5 star reviews.
BUT, there is always a but, the farking product is disabled, crippled, not well designed or was designed by an idot. I can even imagine him/her thinking; "oh look, we have a really nice transmitter that can play from USB and SD Card, and it even transmits the RDS information and we are giving away a remote as well and not to mention the powerful transmitter that plays the sound so very well. This is too much of a value for what its priced. There should be some way to cripple this product. Oh, I know, why don't I farking put a limit on how many songs to play, that will teach them not to listen to many music that they have purchased. While I am at it, I should also put a limitation on how many directories I can read from. Oh yeah thats so cool, 999 songs and 20 directories. Fark yeah!"
I mean honestly, who puts these kinds of limitations in any device. It does not even makes any sense. The company must have paid minimum wage to this programmer. I understand that the unit can display only three digits so there is a limitation of 999 songs, but what limits the number of folders. I mean they could have 999 songs in 999 folders if display was the limitation.
Conclusion: This is a well designed transmitter with farking underpaid programmer who was smoking grass while limiting the number of folders to read from. I hope this review makes it to the desk of the management and they decide to pay their programmer a little overtime to remove this arbitrary limitation of 20 folders. I will buy two more if they remove this limitation, one for me and one for me as well. |
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