iPod Car Integration

*Control Review
Using the drive + play is easier than using the iPod itself in some ways. The blue-lit remote knob is designed after the iPod wheel, giving you the ease of searching through hundreds or even thousands of your songs. After finding the right place to put the knob, I found it very easy to search through my 3000 songs and navigate through all the menus. You can set how many songs it will skip when you twist and hold the ring, but the default 5% seems to be perfect, skipping almost exactly 1 letter every second. The shiny little buttons do exactly what the buttons on the iPod wheel do, so it is very easy to get used to. As long as you find a good place for the knob, you will have no problem with harmon/karmon's great controls.

*Display Review
The display is blue back-lit and is easy to see at night and surprisingly easy to see even in direct sunlight. The contrast and brightness can be set, but I use the default, as it seems to be the best. The screen is small enough so that it doesn't look awkward in your car, but large enough so that you or any of your passengers can see what tunes are playing. It can pretty much be mounted anywhere with 3 mounting positions on the back, and the base lets you tilt it pretty much all over the place. Great design. The new drive + play 2 has a color display, so check it out if you have the money.

*Problems with the Drive + Play
Of course it has some minor problems, nothing is perfect. The first and probably it's biggest flaw is the way the menu differs from the iPod. The only thing the drive + play does differently is not displaying the "ALL" feature once in the album menu. This means that if you have a song on your iPod with no album name, it will not show up if you are searching for it through an artist; it will only show up if you search for it in the songs list. This also means that you are forced to search through each separate album if you go to the "artists" menu. you could just give the songs without album names a name such as Other or All. However, if you hardly ever use the search by album feature, I found it much easier to just change all my song's album names to "ALL", this would then give me that feature back, but did take away the search by album, which I never used anyway. Other than this, the drive + play is a dream come true.

*Sound
If your stereo has an AUX input in the back, I suggest buying a wire and connecting it that way, or you can just use the FM transmitter...

Harmon/Kardon just came out last month with drive + play 2, which costs a lot more, but has so many more features. If you want the simple, small, and intuitive design of the original drive + play, I suggest you buy it now before they stop making them. It is only a matter of time seeing how they have been out for many years and seem to be simplified and dwarfed by the newer, technologically advanced drive + play 2. You can now buy the drive and play for less than $30 dollars at Amazon.

Drive + Play

* Compatible with all docking iPods
* 2.5" Backlit black & white display screen
* Wired controller
* Full-music browsing and control
* Built-in wireless FM transmitter
* 3.5mm direct audio output
* Optional wired FM transmitter

Drive + Play 2

* Compatible with Apple's iPod®, USB flash memory drives and many other portable music players
* 3.5" full color display screen
* Wireless 2.4GHz controller
* Media hub provides connectivity, power, and audio
* Full-music browsing and control
* Built-in wireless FM transmitter
* 3.5mm direct audio output
* Wired FM transmitter included
* Displays album art
* Display screen is skinnable allowing change of appearance with built-in themes, or download additional themes from the web.
* Automatic Music Mix makes "channels" of music, grouped according to your taste and habits
* Fast letter search with speech confirmation
* Updateable firmware so Drive + Play 2 is never outdated.

OPTIONAL ACCESSORIES:
(Shipping later this year.)

* Satellite Radio kit - Allows display control of SIRIUS? satellite radio tuners
* Bluetooth® cell phone kit - Adds complete hands-free phonebook and caller ID.