Review of Griffin AutoPilot with iPod nano 4G
Short version: it works. It charges the 4g iPod nano, the line-out works great, as do the pause/play, skip/scan forward/reverse controls and it pauses playback when you shut your car off!!
Full review:
Nothing on the package of the AutoPilot that I received from amazon.com ($30.85 shipped) indicates compatibility with the iPod nano 4G. Only 1G to 3G is listed. However, it works completely with the iPod nano 4G. So if you are buying this in store don't worry about what it says on the package. It works. However, don't buy it in store because in store it will probably be $50+tax. If you can stand the wait, buy it from Amazon for more than $20 less. But, hey, it's your money - do what you want!
The AutoPilot comes with the adaptor and a short (about 3 foot) mini-jack audio patch cable. The cable isn't particularly thick, so if you require half-inch think audio cables this isn't for you. However, if you care about the sound quality instead of the thickness of the cable, this will do fine. ;^) I'm not using the audio cable because we have an audio input in our Matrix via an adaptor box installed behind the dash that has a cable already plugged into it, and changing the cable would involve taking the dash apart. It, incidentally, is thicker then the provide one. Thank goodness!
The adaptor has a round pause/play button in the middle, surrounded by a glowing ring, and skip/scan back and forward controls as the outer ring on the left and right sides respectively. That is, the entire left side of the outer ring is back and entire right side of the outer ring is forward. Press and release to skip. Hold to scan. The controls work great and are easy to use blind, though, as I tested this tonight, the controls themselves are not lighted. Only the power ring around the pause/play button is lit. However that works fine once you know that inside the ring is pause/play and outside of the ring is skip/scan. I do have to say that the controls feel a little light to the touch, such that it could result in accidental track changes, though I haven't had it long enough to know if it's actually a problem and it didn't happen in my test.
There is also a small switch that sets the adaptor's audio output to "Lo" or "Hi". I believe that the "Lo" setting is used with FM transmitters, but don't quote me on it. What I can tell you with certainty is that with a line-in input you are going to want to set it to "Hi", otherwise the output volume is too low and sound quality is poor (or perhaps just low volume - I didn't test it extensively). Switched to "Hi" the volume is good/normal. In my brief test I did not detect any static or clipping. The sound quality was excellent, or at least as excellent as my factory car stereo is capable of being. I used it both sitting with the car engine off, as well as driving around town. It performed flawlessly. Note that mine shipped with the switch set to "Lo" so you will want to check the setting of this switch.
Another thing to note about this design is that if you have it right side up with "skip back" on the left, then the audio cable is coming out of the upper right corner. You probably won't want to flip it over to have it coming out the left side, as then the controls would be backward. Just something to keep in mind.
Now for the killer feature that I was hoping for and the AutoPilot didn't fail me: when you shut off your car it pauses your iPod! I can't reiterate enough just how great that feature is. I have this on my (crappy) FM transmitter that I use in our other car and while that transmitter is pretty terrible, I live with it in part because of this feature, which is just really, really wonderful. Note that it works even though power gets shut off pretty instantly to the outlet. If you haven't had this feature before it is something you'll have to get use to because you are probably in the habit of immediately hitting the pause control on your iPod after powering off the car. If you do that with this gizmo you'll actually start it playing again! Trust me, though, you'll get use to it, and you'll like it - or else!
When the adapter is receiving power and no iPod is connected, the light ring glows red. When you plug in an iPod that needs charging, it will slowly pulse a... err I'm forgetting the color (maybe a light blue???) It isn't overly bright, but it is pulsing. The slow pulsing doesn't bother me, but I imagine that there might be some for whom they'd wish it wouldn't pulse. When the iPod is fully charged it glows steadily (in theory - in my test I didn't have time for it to charge to full capacity.)
The controls work well and I find them pretty handy because, unlike the attached iPod, these controls are always in the same place. How useful they are may depend on the location of your outlet. In our Matrix it's pretty perfectly located about midway up the dash just to the right of the steering wheel. They will prove even more useful for my iPod touch.
Another thing worth noting is that this adapter eliminates the cable clutter that we had with our "*** imp" solution. That (piece of junk) had both audio and power cables coming out of the dock connector. Moreover it had a short length of audio cable to which we had to plug the cable going into the car, and it wasn't infrequently the case the the audio cable got pulled out. With the AutoPilot the audio cable plugs into the adapter, and then a single cable leads from the adaptor to the iPod. This is a huge improvement. I was able to push almost all of the audio cable through the back of the cubby that we have it running out of, and so it pretty much has just disappeared. The AutoPilot is a big upgrade for us when it comes to cable clutter.
One last thing. Shortly after testing the AutoPilot out I ended up turning of the "shake to shuffle" feature of the iPod. The nano is so light that I bumped the cable and the nano fell out of the cubby I had it sitting in and landed on the carpet. This resulted in triggering shake to shuffle and I ended up going from a great Bob Dylan album to a great, but not exactly what I wanted, Raffi tune. Ouch. What a completely useless new feature!
Full review:
Nothing on the package of the AutoPilot that I received from amazon.com ($30.85 shipped) indicates compatibility with the iPod nano 4G. Only 1G to 3G is listed. However, it works completely with the iPod nano 4G. So if you are buying this in store don't worry about what it says on the package. It works. However, don't buy it in store because in store it will probably be $50+tax. If you can stand the wait, buy it from Amazon for more than $20 less. But, hey, it's your money - do what you want!
The AutoPilot comes with the adaptor and a short (about 3 foot) mini-jack audio patch cable. The cable isn't particularly thick, so if you require half-inch think audio cables this isn't for you. However, if you care about the sound quality instead of the thickness of the cable, this will do fine. ;^) I'm not using the audio cable because we have an audio input in our Matrix via an adaptor box installed behind the dash that has a cable already plugged into it, and changing the cable would involve taking the dash apart. It, incidentally, is thicker then the provide one. Thank goodness!
The adaptor has a round pause/play button in the middle, surrounded by a glowing ring, and skip/scan back and forward controls as the outer ring on the left and right sides respectively. That is, the entire left side of the outer ring is back and entire right side of the outer ring is forward. Press and release to skip. Hold to scan. The controls work great and are easy to use blind, though, as I tested this tonight, the controls themselves are not lighted. Only the power ring around the pause/play button is lit. However that works fine once you know that inside the ring is pause/play and outside of the ring is skip/scan. I do have to say that the controls feel a little light to the touch, such that it could result in accidental track changes, though I haven't had it long enough to know if it's actually a problem and it didn't happen in my test.
There is also a small switch that sets the adaptor's audio output to "Lo" or "Hi". I believe that the "Lo" setting is used with FM transmitters, but don't quote me on it. What I can tell you with certainty is that with a line-in input you are going to want to set it to "Hi", otherwise the output volume is too low and sound quality is poor (or perhaps just low volume - I didn't test it extensively). Switched to "Hi" the volume is good/normal. In my brief test I did not detect any static or clipping. The sound quality was excellent, or at least as excellent as my factory car stereo is capable of being. I used it both sitting with the car engine off, as well as driving around town. It performed flawlessly. Note that mine shipped with the switch set to "Lo" so you will want to check the setting of this switch.
Another thing to note about this design is that if you have it right side up with "skip back" on the left, then the audio cable is coming out of the upper right corner. You probably won't want to flip it over to have it coming out the left side, as then the controls would be backward. Just something to keep in mind.
Now for the killer feature that I was hoping for and the AutoPilot didn't fail me: when you shut off your car it pauses your iPod! I can't reiterate enough just how great that feature is. I have this on my (crappy) FM transmitter that I use in our other car and while that transmitter is pretty terrible, I live with it in part because of this feature, which is just really, really wonderful. Note that it works even though power gets shut off pretty instantly to the outlet. If you haven't had this feature before it is something you'll have to get use to because you are probably in the habit of immediately hitting the pause control on your iPod after powering off the car. If you do that with this gizmo you'll actually start it playing again! Trust me, though, you'll get use to it, and you'll like it - or else!
When the adapter is receiving power and no iPod is connected, the light ring glows red. When you plug in an iPod that needs charging, it will slowly pulse a... err I'm forgetting the color (maybe a light blue???) It isn't overly bright, but it is pulsing. The slow pulsing doesn't bother me, but I imagine that there might be some for whom they'd wish it wouldn't pulse. When the iPod is fully charged it glows steadily (in theory - in my test I didn't have time for it to charge to full capacity.)
The controls work well and I find them pretty handy because, unlike the attached iPod, these controls are always in the same place. How useful they are may depend on the location of your outlet. In our Matrix it's pretty perfectly located about midway up the dash just to the right of the steering wheel. They will prove even more useful for my iPod touch.
Another thing worth noting is that this adapter eliminates the cable clutter that we had with our "*** imp" solution. That (piece of junk) had both audio and power cables coming out of the dock connector. Moreover it had a short length of audio cable to which we had to plug the cable going into the car, and it wasn't infrequently the case the the audio cable got pulled out. With the AutoPilot the audio cable plugs into the adapter, and then a single cable leads from the adaptor to the iPod. This is a huge improvement. I was able to push almost all of the audio cable through the back of the cubby that we have it running out of, and so it pretty much has just disappeared. The AutoPilot is a big upgrade for us when it comes to cable clutter.
One last thing. Shortly after testing the AutoPilot out I ended up turning of the "shake to shuffle" feature of the iPod. The nano is so light that I bumped the cable and the nano fell out of the cubby I had it sitting in and landed on the carpet. This resulted in triggering shake to shuffle and I ended up going from a great Bob Dylan album to a great, but not exactly what I wanted, Raffi tune. Ouch. What a completely useless new feature!
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