Music & Phone Through FM

The bad news is two weeks ago, as I was taking my wife's friend to the airport, a lady ran a red light and I hit her at 45 mph. The good news is the safety of the 2011 Prius is all we expect it to be. All the front airbags went off, it called Toyota and they dispatched police and ambulance. I walked out 15 seconds after the crash without a scratch. The bad news is my 5 month old Prius IV was totalled. The good news is there was one Prius IV left (since Toyota is not making 2012's) configured exactly the same and so I bought it.

In the meantime (I had 2 or 3 weeks between the accident and the new car), I went back to my 1999 Lexus RX 300 (with 174,000 miles!). But I had no bluetooth. So that got me thinking of buying something for that car. I did a bunch of research and bought a $23 solution on eBay. It came today and I was very unhappy. It did not have A2DP, the display was extremely small, only the 1st few characters of the MP3 were shown in DOS format (8.3), and the HFP/phone conversations were not that great regardless of the FM channel I chose. So it's going to go back.

I spent this evening looking for a substitute and was pretty unhappy with pretty much everything I looked at. I wanted a device which had HFP for Phone, A2DP for bluetooth audio, a slot for a flash drive and a readable display that clearly showed the name of the song being played sort of what I was used to from the Prius. I could not find anything which broadcast on FM that satisfied all my criteria.

There were a couple of interesting in dash or installable ones such as the Parrot line but I wanted something portable which I could use in the Lexus but also take with me on trips and use in a rental car.

I also looked at some potential visor mounted ones but they didn't use the car speakers (though I may look at them again sometime but I don't recollect any of them working with flash drives or SD cards).

So I have walked away empty handed and will continue to use the one I purchased on eBay until I return it.

As soon as USAA wires me the money, I will be able to buy the replacement Prius and so while I could use a portable device, I'll have another prius this week or next.

But for those of you who need such as solution for your prius, what have you found - an installable solution, visor solution, or is there an FM transmitter solution you have been happy with.

(in my case, keep in mind, my iPhone is kept on a RAM mount to the left of the steering wheel and so I did not look at solutions that had 12v adapter plug ins that were also iPhone holders)

Happy holiday and I am so glad that the Prius is as safe as advertised!

Joel

 

Was thinking of the flexsmart last night but I do not believe it will play flash drives; otherwise, looks like a great and well built product.

The cassette approach works great just to play music from the iPhone. May we assume that as it merely redirects the phone output out the jack to the car speakers it will also work with the audio of a phone conversation? Though like the Flexsmart, it is an iPhone only solution and does not support flash drives and sd cards.

Will still keep looking...

Thanks for taking the time to respond. Merry Christmas!

Joel