Here's a small assessment of the equipment.

Pros:
- You only need to press "Ch +" or "Ch -" on the steering wheel once to switch songs (Unfortunately, about 5% of the time it does continue to fast-forward or rewind indefinitely and you'll be forced to press the "Ch +" or "Ch -" once more to have begin to play the selected song).

Cons:
- Doesn't recharge your iPod
- You'll have to tolerate the loud sound heard when switching tracks from the TL's cassette player itself. (not truly a con b/c it is a cassette player)
- The sound quality seems to be lacking on certain songs. (Sony Cassette Adaptor surpasses this equipment in sound quality IMO)

Well, I know it's not a true iPod integration and the pros will definitely outweight the cons, but it's cheap and will have to do for now. The easiest way to use it is to already have a playlist selected. If anyone's interested, you can check out the link below,

http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/smartdeck/

 

Thanks for the review!


With my previous experiences with tape adapters, certain "smart" tape decks have compatibility issues. These decks will auto fast forward or auto reverse to find the location of an audio track. Since the deck does not detect the signal, it tries fast forwarding/reversing a few times and then spits the tape out. The remedy sometimes is just to turn off the car and try again.

Have you experienced this at all with the SmartDeck?

 

I've haven't experienced that at all or maybe I'm not waiting long enough for it to spit out the tape after fast fowarding/reversing continously. I'll have to wait a bit and see what happens.

 

I guess I wasn't clear enough. The tape cassette ff or rw as a result of the headunit (cassette deck) trying to locate the beginning of an audio track. This is a feature of the headunit so that you may ff/rw to the beginning of every song and not have to guess when to stop ff/rw-ing.

Unfortunately, as some cassette adapters wear out over time, the signal they emit can no longer be detected by the headunit. Therefore, the headunit continues to ff or rw and then simply gives up.

Maybe its too early to ask this question.

 

If someone wants to buy one, I will sell them mine.... Basically brand new.

 

I see what you're saying. Yeah, I think it's WAY too early to ask such a question since I just picked up the adaptor yesterday. By the time it begins to wear out over time I should already have a true iPod integration setup in my car.

 

Conduct all sales here please: Private Sales & Trades

 

Here's an addition to the cons segment I documented early. It doesn't seem to work properly in cold temperatures. This morning it would play about 5-10 secs of a song and just pause. After selecting another song from the iPod itself, it did the same thing. At first I thought it was my iPod acting up, but then I realized it was the adaptor. Plugged in sony's cassette adaptor and it worked just fine.