Installation, Testing and Comparison
Setting up The Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 is straight forward, plug the power adapter into the vehicles 12V accessory outlet aka the cigarette lighter.
Next turn the iPod on and plug the iCarPlay Wireless 250 into the iPod/iPhone docking connector, the LCD should immediately light up and display the most recently used station for wireless transmission.
Once plugged in there are two ways to get the music started, manual tuning and autoscan.
With Manual Tuning, press and hold the M button until the LCD display flashes, then use the M and D buttons to tune up and down the frequencies, the S button is then pressed to set the station; Now just press play on your iPod/iPhone and you should hear your tunes.
To use the AutoScan 3D feature, press and hold the S button until the display shows the words SCAN. Once it finds the best station, the iCar Play Wireless 250 will lock onto the frequency that it has selected, now change your radio dial to match the frequency and hit play on the iPod. The selected frequency is stored to the S buttons memory for instant recall.
The three buttons can be preset to specific frequencies, once the station frequency you want is displayed, then press and hold one of the buttons you wish to program until the screen displays P1, P2 or P3. To select one of the preset stations, juts press any of the three buttons to select the stored preset.
If you have any questions about how to use the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250, there is a small cheat sheet attached to the cable.
The LCD Screen timer can be toggled by pressing and holding the D button. Hold it will either toggle the display between Auto-Off and always On.
One of the exciting features of the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 is that it can charge almost any USB device from a cell phone to camera to MP3 player (non Apple). Simply unplug the Monster iCarPlayWireless 250 cable from the power adapter and use the cable included with the device you wish to power.
Besides using the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 in vehicles, one can also use it at home or at the office, just plug the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 cable into a USB 2.0 compliant port and have an FM radio in the vicinity.
For testing, I used a iPod 5th Gen 60 GB and an iPhone 3G, set up was straight forward. When the radio frequency was empty, then the sound quality of the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 was excellent.
Unfortunately, in the Tri-State New York region, there are so many radio stations, that once you drive far enough, you will hit some sort of interference, this is not a fault of the Monster product, but of the surrounding locale.
The Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 worked flawlessly with both the iPod and the iPhone 3G. There was no interference with the iPhone and the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250. When a call came through, the music would fade out and the call was able to be answered.
The beauty of the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 is that it charges the device while in use, so even after a long trip, the iPhone/iPod is fully charged even after the longest journey.