Soundfly BT Ultimate Bluetooth Car Fm Transmitter WMA MP3 Player for SD Card USB Stick iPhone 3Gs and 3G iPod Zune
Featuring a sleek new design with a user-friendly interface, Soundfly BT provides a live full duplex communication solution using Bluetooth technology through FM transmission to your FM car radio and allows you to speak to callers through an external DSP microphone. Soundfly BT is pairable with any phone equipped with Bluetooth functionality or a connection to a Bluetooth adaptor. Bluetooth A2DP technology enables wireless transmission of music from your cell phone. If an incoming or outgoing call is made, the music will be paused. The transmission of music will resume automatically when the call is ended. Soundfly BT also lets you listen to sound files such as MP3 & WMA file stored in portable memory devices like USB flash memory & SD card, etc through your car radio speakers. It supports RDS (Radio Data System), so when you receive a phone call, caller id will be displayed on your car stereo, or while listening to music, you can see the song and artist’s name displayed on your car stereo. Soundfly SD transmits to all FM frequencies (87.6MHz – 107.9MHz) and memorizes up to 7 FM frequencies. It is equipped with a fully functional remote control. You can answer/end calls, change volume, change frequency, folder shift, fast Forward & Rewind, Repeat or Bookmark your favorite songs through the remote. Note: You need to do iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update on your iPhone 3G for A2DP Bluetooth Stereo connection. Because of iPhones Bluetooth AVCRP capability, this unit can only support vol +/- and play/pause functions. Track forward or back functions are not supported until it is changed in iPhone’s new update.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Works With Minor iPhone bugs
I’ve been using this product for about a week as a replacement for a Kennsington FM transmitter/charger that I was using for my first Gen iPhone. I recently got an iPhone 3Gs and the Kennsington no longer worked properly. At first I tried to find a wired solution that would charge and transmit, but the reviews for these are just awful. Finally, I wound up purchasing this and it works well. The music controls on the device don’t seem to work with the iPhone, but that is minor. The FM transmitter is much better than the Kennsington I had been using. There are a few hiccups with dialing out, but these could be the iPhone OS 3.0 since A2DP is new to this device (there is already a beta of OS 3.1 for BT issues among other things). The mic works well, and having the audio use the cars speakers is much better than a tinny little integrated speaker. Not having a charger is actually fine for my normal commute. I bought one for $20 to use for longer trips.
4 Stars Only one major flaw with plug in cable use and ipod Shuffle
I bought this because I needed a bluetooth device for driving with my cell phone. As an added bonus, I thought I could use it to play my music with my ipod shuffle as well as from the USB or card plug ins.
The sound quality is good and it was very easy to set up and pair. The SD card feature on this device works great… the card disappears completely into the device and I use a small 256mb card I had lying around for my toddler when she’s in the car with me.
There is only one major flaw with using the 3.5mmm cable plug in…Music will NOT pause automatically to make or recieve calls. In other words, if you have a MP3 player that does not have bluetooth (like the ipod shuffle) and use the provided cable to plug in your music device, it will operate independently from the bluetooth feature. So you can technically listen to your device, but when a phone call comes in, you have to manually switch your music off in order to use the bluetooth calling feature.
If you try to plug your shuffle or MP3 player in using the USB port instead, the bluetooth calling will automatically pause your music. But with the ipod shuffle this poses another problem…you have to store your music on your shuffle as MP3′s under a data folder labelled MP3 or soundfly (just like with the SD card). You cannot just use the music stored on your shuffle through itunes. I have my itunes set-up so it will rip my music to my libraries in MP3 format. It’s the sneaky thing that Apple does so you can’t play your music from another device. If you rip your music onto your computer using itunes, make sure you tell it to use the mp3 formatting so you can have the option of using those same music files on a SD card.
It’s pretty cool when the phone call comes in and the music is paused automatically. It just doesn’t work for the plug in audio cable port. I know for sure because I called and check with the company. They varified that that was the design…the audio cable port is not overriden by the bluetooth calling. That’s the only major flaw with this device. They just need to make the plug in cable operate like the SD and USB ports and this thing would be perfect.
1 Star Terrible with IPhone 3GS
I wanted to listen stereo music, and send/receive phone calls via bluetooth from iphone 3gs in my car. After some research, this product seems to be a perfect solution as it can transfers the sound to FM radio or Aux In. Everything with this product went well until I realized it does not work at least wirh iphone 3GS unlike advertised.
It plays “OK” music in FM quality – although it is more like from radio station with weak signal. But whether you were listening music or not, the product loses speaker sound by calling/receiving a phone call 9 out of 10 times. Its speaker also does not automatically go to music playing mode after a phone call so you need to manually reset your speaker (SNDFLY BT speaker -> iphone speaker -> SNDFLY BT speaker) in your iphone after every phone call.
I am returning the item.
5 Stars Amazing product. No complaints
After reading most of the reviews for this item I figured I’d go ahead and get it. I read a few negative things in the older reviews that seem to have been addressed very well since they were brought up. I personally can’t find anything wrong with it or anything that I would change. Here’s a few of my favorite qualities:
-The microphone cord is very long so it can be placed in a proper location. According to those I’ve talked to I sound very clear so the microphone is good quality.
-The FM transmitter seems to be really powerful (I haven’t tested the range on it though). I even run my Sirius radio via 3.5mm output to this unit because it sounds more clear than my Sirius car kits FM transmitter. And aside from the clearity of it, it pumps out more power. My Sirius and other FM transmitters that I’ve used don’t pump out enough power to max my speakers out but this thing has no problem with it.
-Set it and forget it. No need to fumble with connecting every time via bluetooth. Set your phone or whatever to automatically accept the connection and every time you power it up it will automatically reconnect.
-It’s very sturdy. I’ve had other 12V DC Plug In devices that had weak hinges so a bump would make it tilt down or the plug was too loose so it would roll side to side. Not with this little guy though… it stays put!
-The remote. It has every option on it. Sometimes you get a remote control that can’t control every aspect of the unit, but this one can. There’s never really any need to touch the unit unless you lose the remote.
This is the best unit of its kind that I have ever used. Hands down.
4 Stars It Really Works With iPhone 3GS
I have tried several different products for getting my iPhone to play through my car radio. I was very happy with the Griffin iTrip, but the one I had did not work with the iPhone. Nothing approached the sound quality and “it just works” ease of use, including Griffin’s products. When I upgraded to the 3GS, which has stereo bluetooth output, I toyed with the idea of replacing my car stereo with a bluetooth unit. This product eliminated that need. It is simple, and once it is set up it just works. If you are playing the iPod/iPhone when you get in the car, the audio is automatically transferred to the car stereo system.
The only flaw is the incredibly bad user manual, but the unit is simple enough to figure out. With a decent manual, this would be a 5-star product.
