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Apps sprung to life, instantly with a tap, and playing music and running navigation apps was just like I had my iPhone plugged in with a cable, with audio coming through my car speakers without any noticeable delay. It just works!Įverything functioned when using the CPLAY2air dongle as if I was still connected to my Alpine over a wired connection. Smiles soon followed, and after briefly staring at the CarPlay Home screen, in amazement that it all actually worked so flawlessly, I began to play around. Once I selected this option my iPhone was soon connected to my receiver and I was running Apple CarPlay wirelessly on my Alpine receiver.
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Once I paired my iPhone 11 Pro to the dongle’s Bluetooth connection I was soon asked by the iOS software if I wanted to use it for CarPlay.
Luckily for me, I was in the blue light camp on my Alpine X902D-G7 aftermarket CarPlay receiver in my Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk7. If it continuously stays red or never switches to blue, or you don’t see anything appear on your CarPlay screen, then you have some troubleshooting ahead of you. If one of the lights turns blue, things are looking good and you can begin to pair with your iPhone over Bluetooth. There are two lights on the end of the dongle, these will be your indicator for sheer joy or misery with this dongle. It is at this point (or just after plugging this dongle into the same USB you use for wired CarPlay) that will you know if this CPLAY2air dongle will work with your vehicle’s wired CarPlay system or aftermarket wired CarPlay receiver. Simple packaging contains the CPLAY2air dongle and instruction card From here you begin to search for your iPhone over Bluetooth and begin to pair with it. Once the dongle is connected to your USB port and turning the ignition key in your vehicle, your head unit will come to life as normal, and once the dongle has powered up, you simply select the same CarPlay button to reveal the dongle’s fairly simplistic main menu interface. It lists instructions to simply replace the USB to Lightning cable you use for wired CarPlay with the dongle’s own USB connector, connecting into the same USB port in your glovebox, centre console or dashboard.
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Although one page reads like it has been written for the cheaper Android receiver dongle, the other page is more related to the adapter that’s in the box.
#Air navigation pro review manual#
Inside you’ll find just the dongle itself and a small two-page instruction manual written in both English and Chinese. The CPLAY2air dongle comes packaged in a clean-looking Apple white box. Well, someone has actually gone and done that! So does it this dongle work as intended? Let’s find out… What’s in the box & connection I even remember saying a few years ago that I hope someone would create a dongle that fools the wired CarPlay receiver into thinking it was connected to an iPhone, albeit wirelessly. You may be thinking that this all sounds a little too good to be true. You simply connect your existing wired Apple CarPlay factory system or an Apple CarPlay enabled aftermarket receiver, and by connecting the dongle to the same USB port in your car, you can connect to the CarPlay system/receiver, wirelessly instead. How the CPLAY2air dongle connects is very simple and it doesn’t require any tinkering with your existing system. It is this the latter dongle that I will be covering here in this review. The second dongle is the CPLAY2air wireless adapter for factory CarPlay, which costs $159.95 directly from and ships worldwide. The CPLAY2air dongle comes in two flavours: One costs you $109.95 and it will only work with receivers that run an Android operating systems. That’s until now, thanks to the CPLAY2air dongle that’s available from.
So unless you have 30K+ to drop on a new car, wireless Apple CarPlay is a little out of reach for many of us. Some wireless Apple CarPlay aftermarket receivers have even yet to be purchasable within the UK and Europe.
#Air navigation pro review install#
Since its availability some four years ago with the launch of iOS 9, anyone who wanted to experience wireless Apple CarPlay will have to either purchase one of the very few recent vehicles that have wireless CarPlay installed in them or install a wireless Apple CarPlay aftermarket receiver from Alpine, Pioneer or Kenwood. Whether you are using a factory-fitted Apple CarPlay system or an aftermarket receiver, the majority of us users have been running Apple’s in-car entertainment solution via a USB to Lightning cable that’s connected to the USB port in your vehicle glove box, centre console or dashboard. For many years (and still to this day for most of us) Apple CarPlay has been mostly a wired experience in the car.