I bought a cheap one, and its awful. Lots of interference from the millions of radio stations round here, even at the end of the frequency range.
Are the more expensive ones any better or am I going to have to stump up for a stereo with aux-in? (the standard unit can't be converted)
I've uses a few in the past but in the south east there are so many stations that finding a bit of spare frequency is practically impossible. The best ones are meant to scan the airwaves and find the clearest wavelenghts but I haven't tried them. I have two old ones kicking around somewhere.
It depends what car you have. Sometimes it's easy to fit a aux adapter. It took me 10mins in my previous Honda Accord and it wasn't much more expensive than a FM transmitter.
I'm using a Belkin one which is pretty good:
It seems to be as good as FM transmitters will get...as for going for the end of the frequency range, better idea would be to survey the spectrum and find a quiet bit for your area.
Bought a cheap one off amazon few years ago and found it to be fine at either end of the frequency range.
Bit of background hiss but engine and road noise hid it pretty well. Friend bought a slightly more expensive one but it was no better IMHO. Not sure if the ones that cost a lot more are any better.
no they are rubbish, ive had 2 and if you commute in the car as staions wavelengths change you get load of interference. better off investing in a proper ipod connection
Pretty much unusable IME. Probably work fine if you live in the middle of nowhere but when i've tried them in Europe absolutely hopeless.
try it in a different place in your car. Mine was crap until I stuck it in the back window under where the antenna is
hmm, this is what i expected! i'm commuting down the M3 and theres loads of radio stations getting in the way.
Its a vauxhall with a "CD30" stereo which means no way of adapting it for an aux-in, not even with the CD changer hijack thingy.
We bought a Griffin itrip for about £28 from Amazon. We used it driving from Cheshire to the middle of France and back and thought it was great, and that was in an Audi A6 estate where the antenna is a long way back. The search facility didn't seem to work well but finding a clear frequency and tuning it to that did. We probably only had to change frequency once every hour or so on that journey, apart from Paris where there simply was no clear bandwidth. Positioning on the centre console did seem to affect reception and charging it caused massive interference.
If a cheap one doesn't work, you'll find none do very well. I too had a Vauxhall and spent over £100 on various transmitters, all were crap. I eventually paid for a custom one from a Vauxhall dealership that piggies directly onto the FM input so you choose a frequency and you get zero interference. It also came with a bracket for the car (2005 Astra) so it was a really neat solution and will work on your car. I believe it is manufactured by Dension. Cost me £120 fitted and worth every single penny.
EDIT - and sold it on EBay for £80 when I changed car 😉
I drove the M3 from Southampton to the M25 last weekend and the weekend before. Don't recally any problems with finding a useable bit of bandwidth. Once inside the M25 it can be less good but that's because of the huge number of different radio stations. As previously said tho, fortunately I'm able to place my transmitter right underneath my antenna so that's probably optimizing it's performance.
I think the Dension option may be your best bet. I had an iTrip for a while that worked pretty well driving from Chippenham to London, and down to Bristol, on one frequency, but going down to Bath needed a change, and then BBC Wales added a station just across the Bristol Channel that swamped the frequency I used to be able to use from around Marshfield on the A420, and I just got so pi55ed off having to keep changing frequency that I gave up and bought an Alpine head-unit that allows me to control the Pod and shows cover art on it's screen as well via USB in the back. Great thing is I can connect my iPhone and get spoken instructions when using my Copilot satnav through the stereo while playing music from it, which has made life easier.