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Hi all, does anyone have any experience of after market android auto head units for their car?
I was toying with the idea of using a rapsberry pi to create one in my camper van, but when you add up all the bits, it's more or less the same price as the cheaper head units you can get on ebay. These are generally android 9 or android 8 - bit unclear if you can actually use it for android auto (as in you plug your phone into it), or whether it's effectively a seperate mobile built into your dashboard.
Anyone bought one? Anyone like them?
I'd be very wary, having a sub-£100 eBay special in my caravan. Wouldn't surprise me if they were running Android 6 and just had some tinkering to say they're on Android 8/9. The sound quality isn't all that good and they tend not to have enough RAM to run any apps properly. Very slow and frustrating, which is the last thing you want to be dealing with when driving. Pumpkin ones get reasonable reviews, but for my money I'd go for a cheap normal head unit with Android Auto from the likes of Kenwood rather than a cheap "full Android" head unit.
Yeah that's what i was kind of wondering - so the android ones don't have a 'android auto' mode as such?
Halfords do Android Auto compatible ones for £200 ish. I'm tempted myself tbh.
Ours doesn't. It's the full Android experience, executed very poorly. You can plug the phone in but it's just in USB storage mode to read any music on it. It connects Bluetooth to use hands free but it's in a caravan so not really that useful.
Cheapest one i can see in halfords is 300 quid...