Music on the Road: Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus

By Jonathan Berohn

Hopefully, we all agree that we shouldn’t listen to our iPods while driving.  There’s pretty much no way to combine driving safely with listening to music through headphones.  Fortunately, there are a number of ways to get around this problem by playing your iPod through your car stereo.

The best all in one solution that I’ve found (unless you have an auxiliary line in built into your car stereo) is the Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus.

How It Works

The Monster iCarPlay Wireless Plus is a wireless radio transmitter that lets your broadcast your iPod music directly to your car stereo (or any stereo for that matter—for home stereo systems, though, there are better iPod interface solutions available).  Briefly, you have to find an FM frequency that is not used by a broadcast channel.  Then you set the iCarPlay to use this channel, and you’ve got your iPod playing through your car stereo.  There are, of course, a number of solutions like this out there for iPods, but Monster has added in a power charger to the iCarPlay.  This means that not only does the iCarPlay not drain your iPod, it also keeps your iPod charged and ready to go.

Ease of Use

Unfortunately, you can’t simply tune the iCarPlay on the fly.  You have to select and program open frequencies into the iCarPlay.  On the positive side, the programming is very simple—it takes longer to find available frequencies than it does to program them in.  Once you have the stations programmed in, switching back and forth is simple.  One annoyance I have discovered is that the channel change buttons are quite sensitive.  Make sure you position the control mechanism so that you aren’t likely to bump it or you will have to constantly change it back.

Performance

The real test of the iCarPlay, of course, is how well it plays your music.  The first thing you have to realize is that it’s not going to sound as good as either the iPod headphones or a commercial radio station.  That said, the quality is certainly good enough to listen to.  You will be spending your time enjoying your music and not thinking about how bad the quality is.