review: Griffin AutoPilot for iPhone and iPod

Most “premium” car chargers for iPhone and iPod are defined merely by the fact that they have a more sophisticated look than their generic ten or twenty dollar counterparts. But Griffin Technology’s AutoPilot is a premium car charger in a very real sense: not only does it offer aux-in (generally the highest quality car audio attainable from your iPhone or iPod) for those users whose car stereos support it, it also includes basic playback buttons right on the head of the charger itself. This saves you the trouble of navigating to your iPhone’s on-screen play/pause button, for instance, which isn’t always the easiest thing to do while driving. That is, of course, if your car’s charging port is in a location you can actually reach while driving (which is not always a given).

The catch, though, is that this has been done before, and been done on the whole a little better. Monster’s same-priced iCarCharger 1000 is essentially the same product, but with an adjustable-angle charging head, aux-in cable which cleverly winds up inside the charging head to suit your needed length. However, the AutoPilot does have two distinct advantages over the iCarCharger, either or both of which may or may not be of value to you. The first is that the AutoPilot has a gain switch, meaning that you can adjust amount of audio feeding into your stereo, which can help if you’re getting too much or too little by default (different story with every brand of car). The other is that, because the included aux-in cable isn’t permanently attached, users whose stereos don’t have an aux-in port can instead use their own cassette adapter in conjunction with the AutoPilot.

Bottom line? The Griffin AutoPilot is nice product, worth its price tag in a vacuum. But it gets a less than stellar star rating because the competition offers a similar-yet-better product for the same price. However, the AutoPilot does offer some features which nonetheless make it the most recommendable option for some users.

One detail that does make the AutoPilot more compelling, for iPod users at least, is the fact that Griffin is currently offering an iPod-only version of the AutoPilot at a $15 dollar discount.

review by Bill Palmer

rating: 3.5 stars out of 5 • GriffinTechnology.com

Best car accessories of 2009

iProng Magazine’s best iPhone and iPod car accessories for 2009:

Review: Monster iCarCharger 1000

Featureless iPhone and iPod car chargers are a dime a dozen, and even those users with a line-in/aux-in port on their car stereo who are looking for a car charger with a built in line-out cable have plenty of options to choose from. But Monster’s new iCarCharger 1000 stands out from the pack with two distinct additional features.


The less immediately apparent (but probably more widely useful) of the two is that the line-out cable, which deceptively appears to be very short in the photo above, is actually wrapped around a spool inside the head of the charger. Slide the head open, unravel precisely how much cable you need for your car setup, lock it into place, and you won’t have one inch more cable running from your charger to your stereo than necessary. In a word, it’s a brilliant concept – and it works as advertised.



The second feature is flashier but may or may not be of practical value to you. The front of the charger includes basic playback features that allow you to play or pause the music and jump to not only the next or previous song, but also the next or previous playlist. This can come in super handy if your car setup is such that your iPhone or iPod isn’t easily available to you while driving (or if you find trying to operate it via the screen while driving to be a distraction).

The problem, though, is that far too many cars have their charging port in a position too far away from the driver for the buttons to be easily reached. In my own car I could barely reach it with my fingertips, and I’ve owned other cars in which the buttons would have been completely unreachable. The fact that the head of the charger can be rotated upward or downward can help, but the usability of the buttons is a crapshoot based on your particular car layout. So while the whole product is brilliant, the fact that too few users will actually be able to comfortably reach the buttons prevents me from being able to give the iCarCharger 1000 five stars, depending on your car it might be a perfect product for you.

Learn more at MonsterCable.com

review by Bill Palmer