25HOURS 7″ Portable Wireless Apple Carplay Android Auto, Car Audio Receivers 90º Rotatable Suspended and Upright Bracket, Touch Screen car Stereo with Mirror Link/Bluetooth/GPS/EQ for All Vehicles

Amy Johnston

4.0 out of 5 stars

Works well, but there are wires everywhere!

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2023

If you have an older car (10 years or more), then this might be a device (F133 7-inch Smart Player) might be for you. However, if you car already has maps and bluetooth, then this device might be more frustration than it is worth.

The users manual just describes the various apps that are built into the device, including: Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, AirPlay, Backgrounds, SD Card, USB, Bluetooth Phone, Autolink, FM Transmitter, Bluetooth Music, Equalizer and Settings. The manual does not provide good instructions for how to connect the device to your automobile.

The device is powered from the standard circular power (i.e., cigarette lighter) supply. A power adapter is provided to connect from the car to the smart player device. Next, you must connect your smart phone to the device. I have an iPhone, so I was primarily interested in using Apple Car Play. The instructions for setting up Car Play were hard to follow as you can tell the information from translated into English from Chinese. You have to turn on wifi and bluetooth on your phone, then start the Car Play app, then go to the Bluetooth pairing app in the device to connect the phone and device together. The pairing only needs to happen the first time, and the device will automatically reconnect bluetooth in the future. Oddly, once my phone connected, the wifi for my phone got turned off. Nevertheless, the Apple Car Play connected and I could see my apps on the device (see photo). I first tried out Maps and it worked as expected.

Next, I tried Music, but could not get any sound to come out of the device. I checked my phone volume and it was turned up. I checked the volume on the smart player and it was turned up to 25. I was unable to find any way to change the volume level for the device itself. I did find and hit the mute button several times, turning mute off and on, but no sound. I gave up on the built-in speaker, and plugged in the provided AUX cord into the device and into my AUX port of the car stereo. Finally, I could hear my music playing through the car stereo, which I also had to change to AUX mode to hear the sound. So, although the device has a built-in speaker, you might or might not be able to get it to work.

You can also connect your phone to the device with a USB cable. I tried this to see if it would help get Apple Car Play to start up faster, but did not have good luck with that either. When I click Car Play, I got a message to connect with wire or wireless. But when I connected the USB wire, it just canceled out of Car Play repeatedly and went back to the device homepage with the built in apps (not my phone apps).

When I wanted to go check the device setting, I could not figure out how to get out of Apple Car Play and back to the device home screen. The manual says you have to turn off bluetooth on your phone to break the pairing to be able to get out of Apple Car Play, and back to the device home screen. This works, but then my phone bluetooth would come back on and automatically reconnect to the device, which would then cause Car Play to start up again.

I also tested out the BT Music app that comes with the device. If you don't want to setup Apple Car Play and just want to play music, this app can do that for you. There is also a separate EQ app to equalize the sound for various music genres; Jazz, Classic, Rock, Pop, Flat, or User (custom).

I tried to use the FM Transmitter app, but it could not find any radio stations. All I heard was pure static. The description in the manual does say something about the the power cord being used as an antenna, so if not much of the cord is stretched out, then it might not get a good signal. This seems rather silly to me already because all I needed to do to hear FM radio is to hit the FM mode on my car stereo and it works just fine. To use the FM Transmitter, I would have to switch to that app on the device (which can be a pain as described earlier), and have it play through the AUX connection.

The smart player also has a media player so you could watch a movie from your phone, an SD card or USB device. I did not test this functionality as I don't have any movies on my phone. You can also use the mirroring apps (AirPlay or AutoLink) to screen cast your phone to the device display.

Lastly, the device comes with two adapters which you can affix to your car to hold the smart player. One is a stand which comes with two adhesive pads (one is an extra). The other is a suction cup which can suction to your windshield or to a plastic plate which you can adhesive to your dashboard.

Pros: This device can bring the latest technology to your old car. Most new cars (5-7 years old) will already have all the same functionality of this device build into the car itself. If your car already has maps (via a map CD or SD card) and your car radio has AUX input and/or Bluetooth, then this device might not give you much more than what you already have.

Cons: Lots of wires everywhere. You have to have at least one cord attached to provide power. If you get the built-in device speaker to work, you might be good with just that but something tells me that speaker is not high performance - so you'll really want to connect the device to your car stereo and its speakers. That means cable #2 to make the AUX connection. And, depending on your car configuration, you might only have 1 cigarette lighter power supply, so you'll also probably want to connect a USB cord to it so you can charge your phone and get it to connected to the device - cable #3. That's a lot of wires running all over the place.