So many electronics, such short battery life. It seems that many of our new electronic toys from cell phones to MP3 players all have to be charged sooner than later to keep them working.

The Apple iPod is no different, if it goes too long without a charge up; no tunes for you!  I got a cassette adapter so that I could listen to my iPod in my car. The Griffin Technology AutoPilot lets me keep my iPod charged in the car. Like every other car adapter product it works by plugging into your car's cigarette lighter. Even if you don't smoke, your car's cigarette lighter is one of your car's most important features for on the go technology.  I don't smoke, but I use the lighter to recharge my cell phone and now to run my iPod in the car.

Useless Features

The Griffin plugs into the cigarette lighter and has a cable that plugs into your iPods base to charge it. At the end of the cigarette lighter charger, the Griffin Autopilot has a fast forward, rewind and play pause button. You can just reach down and click the button to skip a song, go back or pause your iPod.  Uhh, wait a minute, my iPod is within the same distance from me as the Griffin Autopilot, why don't I just click IT?

Useful Features

The Griffin autopilot also has a line out that you can plug the included cable into your car's auxillary input. If like me, you don't have an auxillary input jack on your car's stereo you can use a cassette adapter and plug that into the Griffin Autopilot's line out. The cassette adapter is NOT included. However, using this car charger with a cassette adapter allows me to listen to my iPod in the car without worrying about battery life. I like that the wire to plug into your car via cassette or aux input comes out of the charger, and not your iPod. The wire that goes to the iPod is long enough that one of your passengers, even a rear seat passenger could hold your iPod while it was still plugged in, and scroll through your music library to find tunes that he or she liked.

The Griffin also glows different colors so you can see how your iPod charge is doing. It glows red, so you know its plugged in and ready to charge, Amber for charging (isn't that Yellow?) and Green when your iPod is charged.

Volume may be controlled by both your iPod volume and your car stereo's volume. I find that it works best with the iPod set to about half volume and then using the car stereo volume to adjust up or down.


FM Transmitter?

I have looked this product up on several websites, and the one shown here is the one described as the Griffin Technology Autopilot charger, FM transmitter. However, it is important to note that unless your iPod has an FM transmitter, this doesn't have any FM transmitter in it. Perhaps they mean that it plugs into your car's FM radio?  I am not sure, but although the product has the word FM transmitter in it, the only thing FM about it is that it plugs into your cars stereo system. It is an inaccurate product description, but it is the one pictured and described here (and on several other websites). Griffin does offer FM adapters that allow your iPod to be played on an FM station, but this is not the one.

Summary

This allows you to charge and listen to your iPod in your car. It does what it needs to do, and stuff we didn't even ask it to.

Other Ipod Accessories

Black Leather Case (to protect your iPod)
Rocketfish AV Cable (to plug your iPod into your stereo)
Cassette Adapter (to plug your iPod into your car)
iPod Kicker (a boom box for your iPod)


Recommended: Yes