review: Kensington AssistOne Bluetooth Speakerphone

How about the idea of a bluetooth speakerphone for your car which doesn’t force you to stick your iPhone elsewhere? That’s the basic idea behind Kensington’s AssistOne. We’ve tested plenty of visor-mount bluetooth speakerphones designed to allow you to leave your iPhone in your pocket which get the job done well (in fact one such product won in this category last year), but such products are designed around the notion that you’d never want your phone visible or accessible while in your car – which makes plenty of sense for a generic flip-phone but doesn’t quite jive in the iPhone era, particularly when it comes to also having your iPhone hooked up to your car’s stereo for music playback purposes.

The AssistOne allows you to mount your iPhone within your car or leave it in your pocket, and it also allows you to rely on the AssistOne’s built in speaker (which in our tests sounds good for its size) or connect the entire thing to your car’s stereo system. It’s a jack of all trades product which may finally solve all the tasks you’re likely to perform with your iPhone in your car – at least all the cellphone-related tasks that aren’t hazardous to your ability to drive.

rating: 4.5 stars out of five • Kensington.com

Junior Seau drives off cliff is not funny, so why are we laughing?

Junior Seau gets arrested, released, drives his car off a cliff, walks away. Ta da. Actually there’s nothing funny about abusing a woman, alleged or otherwise, which is what the former star linebacker for the Chargers, Dolphins, and Patriots was arrested for. And he didn’t quite walk away, as he was treated for minor injuries – which suggests that the “cliff” he went over was a much smaller one than what you pictured in your mind when you first saw the headline “Junior Seau drives off cliff.”

But while there’s no way to fully separate that punchline the very unfunny nature of what he allegedly did that got him arrested in the first place, there’s seemingly something fitting about a guy who beats up a woman, deserves more punishment than the kind the justice system can dish out, and then – whoops – drives off a cliff.

In terms of punchlines, it’s an instant flashback to that episode of The Office in which an exasperated Michael Scott goes back to work and proclaims “I drove my car into a f—ing lake.” Out of context it makes no sense. Go watch the episode and you’ll get it.

The other obvious punchline is this: how can a guy who fully survives driving his car off a cliff be the same guy who got injured in nearly every season in the second half of his football career?

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

Griffin AutoPilot for iPhone and iPod: first look

The search for the perfect car connection product for iPhone and iPod continues, and Griffin’s latest entry comes in the form of a car charger along with a line cable designed for those users with stereos that have an aux-in port. The new wrinkle comes in the form of playback controls built into the front face of the charging unit itself, including play/pause and previous/next track.

There’s already a vaguely similar product on the market from Monster, so the two will have to be placed head to head in order to see which works best and for whom. A few immediately noticeable differentiators are the fact that Griffin’s AutoPilot has a high-low gain switch for the line-out port, aimed at helping to account for the different built-in line settings of various car stereos, along with the fact that the line cable is fully detachable from the charging unit. The latter means that users who don’t have a line-in port on their stereo could instead potentially use their cassette adapter instead, but that’ll have to be tested.

Fifty bucks is no small amount of money for a car charger, so this one will have to shine in hands-on testing.

Learn more at GriffinTechnology.com

Top iPhone and iPod car products: Beatweek 75

The highest rated car products for iPhone and iPod on the market as of June 2010:

Scosche SolChat • Bluetooth speakerphone • $99: Every bluetooth speakerphone we’ve tried has its pros and cons, but this one comes out on top for one simple reason: rather than coming with yet another battery to keep charged, this one recharges via solar power. Going green is great, but more importantly you’re being charged up when you need to make a call.

Plantronics Discovery 975 • Bluetooth earpiece • $129: There are any number of bluetooth earpieces on the market that work with the iPhone. But this one is our new favorite, even though it doesn’t come cheap, thanks to a combination of audio quality and comfort – and the styling is worthy of the device’s price tag. The new hands-free laws are a pain, but this’ll help make the whole thing a bit less painful.

Belkin TuneBase FM hands-free • $99: Even the best FM transmitters aren’t ideal for big cities. But this is the best we’ve found, a short gooseneck which includes presets and auto-scanning, can be used with thinner cases, and has a hands-free iPhone option that actually works. More importantly, it offers some of the strongest FM broadcast quality on the market.

ProClip • car-specific mount • $29 + $24-$79: This is the only iPhone/iPod car mounting solution that works well in every car, because they send you a different mounting kit depending on your car. And the option of padded, swivel, and dock connector mounts seals the deal. It’s not inexpensive, but it’s totally worth it.

Belkin & Kensington micro car chargers • $19: Simply put, these two competing micro-chargers make all other standard car chargers obsolete because they’re tiny enough that they’re almost entirely housed within your car’s power socket. Say goodbye to big bulging chargers. Both come with a sync cable for $19; the Kensington is $9 without the cable, $29 with the cable and wall charger, while the Belkin is $14 without the cable.

Monster iCarCharger 1000 • charger plus stereo connection • $59: With the advent of micro-chargers, what would possess you to consider a traditionally shaped charger? Well, this one offers a hidden aux cable which wraps up inside the charger’s head, and has basic iPhone/iPod playback buttons on the front face of the charger. It’s not cheap, and the buttons are only useful if you can reach them. But this is the coolest car charger ever.

View all seventy-five winning accessories for iPad, iPhone, and iPod (including cases, earbuds, car products, stereos, batteries and more) in Beatweek Magazine’s 75th issue which you can read digitally for free right here.

Scosche SolChat: Beatweek 75

Every bluetooth iPhone speakerphone we’ve tried has its pros and cons, but the Scosche SolChat comes out on top for one simple reason: rather than coming with yet another battery to keep charged, this one recharges via solar power. Going green is great, but more importantly you’re getting charged up for when you need to make a call.

View all seventy-five winning accessories for iPad, iPhone, and iPod (including cases, earbuds, car products, stereos, batteries and more) in Beatweek Magazine’s 75th issue which you can read digitally for free right here.

app review: Sally Park for iPhone

Parking a car can become a headache when it comes to remembering where you parked. But with the iPhone, there’s an app for that. Enter Sally Park. When the app is first launched, the user will be able to ‘park’ their car. Pressing the ‘Park’ button will save the geolocation of the device in the app’s memory and it will keep track of where the car is parked according to your current location. An arrow will work like the digital compass on the 3GS and point in the direction of where your car is, so it’s easy to track what direction you parked in. And as you get closer, the app will tell you approximately how many meters away you are.

If the top half of the screen is double-tapped (the blue portion of the screen), it will reveal GPS info. Included is latitude and longitude as well as the accuracy of the geolocation. This is useful to help track down the car you parked somewhere. When a car is parked, the user can also include a note or photo of the location, to make it easier to remember where the car is. There’s also a Map button that will show you your current location as well as the location of your car by a pin on the map.

To use this app for each time you park, hitting the Park button will get rid of the old information and replace it with the new information. It would be useful to get rid of any old notes and photos as well to make it easier to remember what’s what. Additionally, there’s an option in the in-app Settings that can have the app automatically get rid of old notes when a new parking spot is saved.

Sally Park provides an immeasurable necessity for those that constantly find it a hassle to find where they last parked their car in crowded parking lots. And it does it in a beautiful and gorgeous interface that is easy on the eyes. There is currently an issue where the arrow direction may be off just a tiny bit, but the developer is promising a new update soon that will fix any issues with this. Other than that, no other problems.

rating: 4.5 stars out of five • App Store link

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