276°
Posted 20 hours ago

Carlinkit 3.0 Wireless CarPlay Adapter for Factory Wired CarPlay Vehicles,Red UI Interface Upgrade, Compatible with Audi/Porsche/Mercedes/VW/KIA/Hyundai... Online Upgrade IOS16

£39.495£78.99Clearance
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About this deal

Only vehicles that come with wired CarPlay can use this dongle to upgrade to wireless CarPlay. Carlinkit 3.0 is compatible with all iPhone models from the iPhone 6 and above running iOS 10 or above. Carlinkit 4.0 works with both iPhones (iPhone 6 and above, iOS 10 or above) and Android smartphones (Android 9.0 or above, some require Android 11.0 or above, such as Huawei). But the interface of your phone, transposed to your dashboard screen? Now that is nice. So, if you’re like me, when you finally got a vehicle that supported CarPlay (for Apple iPhones) and/or Android Auto, you fell in love with it. Ottocast says the U2-Air works with 600+ car models from 2016 on, except for some Sony aftermarket head units. Its boot time is rated at 18 seconds, and it defaults to 5GHz Wi-Fi. This model only works with iPhones running IOS 10 and up. Unlike some of the other vendors in this roundup, Ottocast has actual offices in the US, but that doesn’t mean the device arrives in the mail any faster. Ferrari: FF, F12 tdf, California T, F12 Berlinetta, 488 GTB, 488 Spider, GTC4Lusso, 812 Superfast, Portofino, Monza SP1, Monza SP2, F8 Tributo, sf90 Stradale

Pioneer: DA120, AVH-ZL5150BT, Z7250BT, AVH, DMH, AVH-2400E, AVH-2330, AVH1400, AVH-1440, AVH1330, FH9400DVS, NEX Head Unit, 250bt

Once plugged into the USB-A port of my Volkswagen Golf, the CarLinkit 2.0 dongle sprang into life and displayed its connection menu. From this point onwards I was navigating in familiar territory. This is because the software used is exactly the same as the previous generation of software. This makes sense for compatibility – one firmware to rule them all. So if you are coming from a first-generation of the dongle, don’t think this dongle’s software or compatibility will be any different with this second-generation, the improvements can be found elsewhere, most likely with speed and stability, thanks to the internal hardware changes that’s been made. Selecting your system’s existing CarPlay menu option displays the dongle menu Another scenario where it can be useful is if your car has only wired CarPlay and you want to run Android Auto on it. Would have been perfect for my X1 but alas, BMW feels wired CarPlay is too old school. Your car model has a USB port, and the cable that comes with the dongle is equipped with a default USB-C to USB-A port.

It has great Wi-Fi specs that make it a solid performer for wireless CarPlay and Android Auto and its HDMI output port allows you to connect it to an external HDMI display. It’s let down by its shared low Wi-Fi performance along with the fifth-place Ultra, and it was the second slowest to launch into its main menu. But its software seems to be more optimised than the other AI Boxes. And as a result, it is the fastest to boot into wireless CarPlay and the second fastest into Android Auto. So CarlinKit has been one of the more popular brands for Apple CarPlay dongles. They were the first major brands to bring us the USB Apple CarPlay dongle for Android systems, and they also lead the charge with one of the first wireless Apple CarPlay dongles too. So it is always interesting to see what they come out with next, and this new Apple CarPlay Mini 3.0 dongle is just one of the newly updated dongles they have released over the past month. Making phone calls works in principle. There is some talking over each other every now and then which however also happens with wired CarPlay from time to time. So if you have the first-generation of dongle, is this second-generation worth upgrading to? Thinking long and hard about it, I don’t think it is. Because software is shared between generations, there will not be any differences in compatibility other than with its hardware. If you think a detachable USB cable or 5.8GHz speeds will help improve the location of your dongle or the connection or the stability in your vehicle, then it might be worth the upgrade. Otherwise, I would wait for more drastic changes or feature improvements.The remaining home screen consists of one large app panel, which can be altered to display apps like maps, or media apps like YouTube. There is a Now Playing media control panel to the side of it, and below this is a panel consisting of four app shortcuts, which can be customised to launch any app that has been installed on the adapter. Once CarPlay has launched, everything runs as you would expect from this new wireless CarPlay dongle. Audio lag is going to be the same as any other dongle, due to using Wi-Fi to stream the CarPlay audio, video and touch input to and from your wirelessly connected iPhone. I have read some people say the audio is improved on this particular dongle, but personally, I couldn’t notice any difference, and I have found the audio to be generally fine on all the dongles I have reviewed. Even though CarPlay is a peer-to-peer connection, probably not suffering from lots of interference while on the road, also not using a hell of a lot of bandwidth (around 10-11mbps for wireless CarPlay), I am quite confident that Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) / WMM may help to bring down latencies quite a bit which would be a very welcome enhancement.​ Plug & Play

Only 4 of the 11 finalists offered video casting support, with varying performance. The same number offered HDMI output to display content onto a separate screen, and just 1 offered HDMI input to allow the use of stream boxes or game consoles on your CarPlay display. Peugeot: 208, 2008, 308S, 3008, 4008, 408, 301, 308, 308 SW, 508, 5008, Expert, Partner Tepee, Traveller, Rifter ( do not recommend using it on Android Auto)

Product Specs:

If you enjoy using apps like Netflix or YouTube in your car, you deserved 👉 Tbox Plus( Full Android 13.0 System and 8+128G memory) or Tbox Mini(Full Android 11.0 System). Covering a wider range of functions, compatible with iPhone and Android smartphones. There is however also another breed of wireless CarPlay adapters ( JoyeAuto/MMB) which are more like complete set-top boxes, running a full-blown Android OS, for example allowing one to watch video on the dashboard. I am not really sold on the idea, violating safe-driving principles. Plus the more potent processor will sip quite a bit more power while at the same time not helping with wireless CarPlay performance. I wonder whether every car can handle the high power draw via USB. There is certainly nothing left for charging a connected phone. The advantage of using a wireless dongle that uses AUTOKIT UI is that it can boot up much faster. This is because the images for the boot-up menu screen are pre-rendered and it does not need to be generated every time it boots up, which saves a bunch of time and this optimisation gets you into the dongle’s boot menu much faster.

Pioneer: DA120, AVH-ZL5150BT, Z7250BT, AVH-Z7100DAB, DMH-C2550NEX, DMH-1500NEX, AVIC-8500NEX, AVIC-3400NEX, AVIC-2400E, AVH-2550NEX, AVH-2330, AVH-1440NEX, AVH1330, AVH-4200NEX, FH9400DVS, NEX Head Unit, 250bt, AVH-Z5200DAB, AVH-Z3100DABIn the box, you get the Mini 3.0 dongle itself. There is a small USB-C to USB-A cable that connects the dongle to your car’s CarPlay USB port. And there is a small paper manual that tells you how to operate and update the dongle. Features & Comparisons Like the above devices, using The Magic Link starts out just fine: Plug it in, watch the intermediary interface appear on screen, look for the Bluetooth connection on the iPhone, connect to it, and CarPlay is up and running. The usual lag applies. It includes a 12-inch USB-A to USB-C cable. From the Cplay2Air interface on the dash, you can choose between different iPhones if multiple people have them and are all vying for control. Then the screen switches over to CarPlay. Your iPhone treats this as a new instance of CarPlay, so if you have the icons pre-arranged, you’ll have to arrange them again in Settings > General > CarPlay.

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