According to Scosche executive vice president Kas Alves, “The new chargers and kickBACK P1 case are just the tip of the iceberg for our iPad accessory line,” adding that more iPad accessories are on the way in the coming weeks.

review by Bill Palmer

Car chargers are car chargers, right? Pick the one with the best price, or the most attractive styling, or the brand name you feel the most comfortable with, and be done with it. That’s the logic that has held true for iPhone and iPod car charging products for years. While we’ve seen variations with aux ports and dual-device ports over the years, the bottom line is that it’s not been a complicated equation; at the end of the day you’re going to have a bulbous entity protruding from your car’s power socket. Except wait a minute, those bulbous protrusions are suddenly no more, thanks to new products Belkin and Kensington.



I don’t know how they did it, and I don’t care. It makes me wonder, sarcastically, if the big bulgy blobs on the front of every iPod or iPhone charger to come to market were just there for show. Because now all the sudden the big bulbs are no longer part of the equation. Instead these new car chargers, once plugged in, sit nearly flush with the lip of your car’s power socket, making them essentially invisible during use. And based on my tests, there’s no tangible difference during use. They don’t take longer to charge your device than the oversized car chargers do, and while I’d been skeptical about whether it might be tricky to remove the tiny stubs from the power socket, it turns out they each stick out just enough millimeters to be yanked out easily with your fingertips.



It’s very rare that we hand out five star ratings for any product as inexpensive as these, as a sub-$20 price tag nearly always means some corner was cut somewhere. But these devices are game-changers. With the exception of chargers that offer additional ports or functionality, there’s now no reason to recommend any car charger that isn’t as tiny as these. The two products are nearly identical. But if we were handing out awards (actually, we will be soon), I’d give the nod to the Kensington because in addition to the $19 charger-plus-cable product, there’s also a $9 charger-only option and a $29 charger-plus-cable-plus-wall-charger combo package. But you can’t go wrong with the Belkin product either.

Learn more about the Kensington charger at Kensington.com.

Learn more about the Belkin charger at Belkin.com.

review by Bill Palmer

Even those of us who’ve traded our iPod and cellphone in for an iPhone are still generally dealing with more than one USB-based mobile device in one form or another, if not within our own pockets then within our household. Hence the rising popularity of dual-device chargers, both at home and in the car. And while there have been various paths taken to accomplish this feat over the past year, Contour Design has taken a novel approach with its rE-charge Universal, a dual-USB charging brick that can be plugged into either a home electrical outlet or a car’s charging port, theoretically allowing you to avoid having to purchase two separate chargers.



This tube-shaped device does a nice job of not giving away its dual functionality, thanks both to the power plug on back that folds flush with its rear surface, and the snap-on piece that covers the car charging plug when not in use. My tests showed that it works as advertised: it comes with one iPhone/iPod cable, you supply the other, and you’re good to go.



Combo products always come with a flipside, and it’s usually that they cost more than the sum of their parts. But that’s not the case here, as shopping around will net you a dual-USB wall charger for about $15, a dual-USB car charger for about $10, and an iPhone/iPod cable for about $10, adding up to nearly as much as the rE-charge’s $39 price tag. So you’re not paying extra to have one device instead of two.



The drawback with this product, however, is more simple: who would want a single charger that has to be carried back and forth between your home and your car each day, as opposed to separate chargers that can each stay put? I can only think of road warriors who want to travel light and would rather lug around this one (pretty large) charger for use in the hotel and the rental car than take along a separate charger for each. And it plays that role well. But I can’t help but believe that the average user who simply wants a dual-USB charger in their home and in their car would be better served by buying two separate chargers.

Learn more about the rE-charge Universal at ContourDesign.com.

by Bill Palmer

Monster’s latest FM transmitter solutions for connecting your iPhone or iPod to your car’s stereo system come in two models with different prices and vastly different looking interfaces, but the functionality of the 800 ($79) and the 1000 ($99) is largely similar on paper. In addition to charging your iPhone or iPod and and offering three programmable FM presets, both products scan the FM spectrum to automatically find the emptiest frequency while promising to block out any cellphone signal interference (a relief to iPhone users).

Aside from the styling, the primary difference out of the box appears to be that the 1000 sports a USB that allows you to charge a second USB-based device while in your car, which could be handy for those users who also need to keep GPS and bluetooth devices, etc., charged up while on the road. Monster also claims that the USB port on the 1000 can be connected to your computer and used to broadcast your computer’s audio to an FM stereo in your house.

FM car transmitter products require significant road testing to determine signal quality, so our full hands-on review will be posted in one to two weeks.

Learn more about the iCarPlay FM 800 and iCarPlay FM 1000 at MonsterCable.com