Big Rick Stuart
Jan 4, 20203 min
Updated: Jan 5, 2020
My 2001 F150 has been great. Just oil changes, brakes, and tires. The first 2 I do myself.
Since 2001 the car audio world has come a long way! I think my factory setup had a cassette tape player, a single CD player, and AM/FM.
I ditched that a long time ago and for many years have had a Sony AM/FM/CD/USB player in the dash. The cool thing is it has an aux input for audio from a headphone jack.
When I had my android phones it was perfect. I just connected the headphone jack to that input. I played my music and I was happy!
About a year ago I inherited an iPhone 7. It is really nice and while I do miss the long battery life of my Moto G6 Play I like pretty much everything else about it.
A big bummer for me is there is no headphone connection. What was Apple thinking?!
Yes there are iPhone headphone adaptor connectors but I wanted a better solution.
With no headphone jack I couldn't listen to my music in my truck without an extra Bluetooth speaker. That works fine but I have to bring a charged up speaker, find a good place to mount it, and the one I had didn't sound as good as my truck's humble audio system.
I could upgrade to add the Bluetooth feature with a new stereo. A few hundred dollars for a good basic stereo it isn't very expensive and it is pretty simple to do myself as I had done it a few times already.
But I remembered I had a Bluetooth receiver gizmo that would do the job. I bought this a while back and it was just sitting around in a box. My iPhone solution found!
There are a lot of these and I can't recommend one over another. I have an older version of this TaoTronics AUX Adapter. It has good reviews with 4 1/2 stars out of 5 from almost 1500 reviews at Amazon.
Here is a link that benefits the ALS Association Golden West Chapter with a purchase
Amazon says there is a newer version with Bluetooth 5.0
Related: What's different about Bluetooth 5.0
Here is what is looks like in my truck.
You can see there is a solid male to male connector that plugs in to the aux in on the front of my stereo. It is very light so that is the only "mount" it needs. If you want to mount it to some other place just get a male to male cable and get creative.
The play pause button works as expected and there is a volume up and down on the side.
If you look close there is a hole just under the T in the logo. That is a microphone. Yes this plays audio audio and adds a pretty good microphone to your old stereo. A win win!
On the bottom is a USB charging port. They say fully charged you get 15 hours of use and much more on "standby"
It works great for me. Nice and simple kind of like my F150. Of course it can add Bluetooth to anything with an AUX input as well.
Not bad for $20
the description at Amazon says:
Convenient to use: auto on and auto Re-connect to the last paired device when connected to power
Superb call quality: CVC 6.0 noise cancellation technology reduces outside noises, better microphone position enables clearer and louder microphone sound
Large battery capacity: provides up to 15 hours playtime, streaming aptX high quality sound
Double link: connect two devices together; feel free to either have the music on or accept a phone call
Hi-fi sound: Bluetooth 4. 2 car kit with aptX and aptX Low Latency (aptX-ll) technology ensure high Fidelity transmission, ideal for turning wired stereos and headphones into a Bluetooth-equipped system
RAWK ON!