Review: Speck Product’s MobileTune iPod FM Transmitter/Charger

The most expensive iPod accessory on the market right now would have to be an iPod-enabled car. So far none of the manufacturers has offered to send me one to try out for a bit, so I have to set my sites a bit lower than that.

Music in my car, off of my iPod, is about all I can aspire to presently and about the easiest way to do that then is with either a cassette adapter or an FM tuner.

Now, I’ve noticed that very few new cars seem to have cassette decks these days, and that very few music stores seem to sell cassettes either, so I guess the day of the cassette adapter is just about done. But, at least for the time being, cars seem to all ship with radios and FM is still the band of choice.

Speck Product’s MobileTune iPod FM Transmitter/Charger is not the only FM tuner available, but what attracted to me about it was that it is a combined FM tuner and iPod recharger. And actually looks kind of spiffy.

A lot of iPod accessories look like, well, iPods, which while this makes a certain amount of sense it doesn’t do a lot to match with the rest of our lives that aren’t iPod-shaped or coloured.

The MobileTune actually looks a bit like the head of a gearshift, one of those leather gearshifts you see in nice sports cars. And it plugs into your cigarette lighter, if you have a car that still has a cigarette lighter, or the car power outlet (which is a cigarette lighter socket minus the little lighter part, and am I the only one still living who remembers the first time they burnt the Hades out of the end of their finger when they first touched the bright cherry red wires at the bottom of the lighter while waiting for their mother to finish in the store?).

You probably know the drill, you chose the frequency on the FM dial that the tuner broadcasts to, then tune your radio to that and there’s your iPod playing on your radio. The MobileTune has continuous tuning, meaning you have the whole spread across the dial to find a disused channel. Pick a number, any number between 88.1 MHz to 107.9 MHz! And your frequency is clearly displayed on a glowing blue dial indicator

Now, this hasn’t happened to me, but someone told me it was a problem in more busy, iPod rich metropolises. Apparently you can find yourself driving down the highway when someone else passes you by with their iPod tuner on and suddenly you switch music, they hear your Boy George and you get their George Jones until you pass by and you’re back to your regularly scheduled channel, until another car tuned to that frequency drives by.

Well, as I said, I haven’t quite had that happen to me yet, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time. For now, however, I found it worked pretty well, me tuned to 88.1 FM and driving on Ottawa’s highways during traffic. Not a single drop out or switch. So I guess we haven’t reached critical iPod mass in Ottawa yet.

Sound quality was another thing I was warned about, that FM tuners in general don’t output particularly good sound. I’m not sure what Good sound is, but I am sure my car’s speakers don’t emit it. I have the stock speakers that shipped with my Toyota still, not the audiophile set that other reviewers must have had. I found the MobileTune’s sound more than adequate and I usually listen on pretty expensive earphones and wasn’t disappointed. It’s at least as good as my FM radio usual puts out for me.

So, the MobileTune looks good, sounds good, works as promised. All parts of a winning package. I like having the iPod charged up as I play it and that combined with the first three pluses, I think I’d give the MobileTune an 85% then. Delivers as promised with a little bit more. I would recommend Speck Product’s MobileTune FM Transmitter/Charger to anyone looking for such a device. A well-executed, slick piece of design and definitely worth the $49.95 MSRP.