CarlinKit 5.0 Wireless CarPlay/Android Auto Adapter USB for Factory Wired Cars (Model Year: 2015 to 2026), Convert Wired Apple CarPlay & Android Auto to Wireless Dongle, Fit in-Dash Navigation

I have a 2007 Mercedes in which I replaced the head unit with a 2015 Kenwood, which gave me (wired) CarPlay. In 2021 I bought a Carlinkit 3 which gave me wireless carplay. This was great but there were three big problems: 1. about once a week the carlinkit unit would hang and have to be power-cycled 2. about once a month the negotiation between the carlinkit and the kenwood would hang, and the kenwood would have to be power-cycled 3. from starting the car to hearing carplay audio out of the kenwood took longer than I liked. A few months ago I took the plunge to buy a carlinkit 5 hoping it would fix these three problems. The good news is that it does seem to, enough so that I don't regret the purchase. I have so far not encountered problems 1 & 2. Let's talk about problem 3. Installing the carlinkit 5 is much more painful than it should be. Superficially it seems easy - connect the carlinkit to the head unit via USB cable - give the car power, so the head unit starts - expect some sort of guidance as to what to do next Unfortunately while this last step does eventually happen, it happens after a frighteningly long time (like three to five minutes) of apparently nothing. During this time I was frantically screwing around on my iPhone, trying to get the device recognized first in Bluetooth, then in Carplay. There may be a fast path to this installation, but the manual doesn't describe it, and this stupidity is probably responsible for most of the returns of the device. It works REALLY well -- but only once you have figured out how to connect it, which is far from obvious. I can't give the fast path because, like any normal person, I was trying one thing after another, and I'm not going to reset the carlinkit and my iPhone to try to recreate the optimal setup path! Once you have connected, the next non-obvious thing is to optimally set up the carlinkit. Once again the documentation is basically useless! What you want to do is, once carplay is active (meaning that your phone is connected to the carlinkit via the in-car wifi network created by the carlinkit) open Safari and go to the web address: 192.168.50.2, which will connect you to the config page for the carlinkit 5. Now we have various options. Here's my understanding of what they do and how to use them: Auto Connect: I set this to CarPlay so it doesn't waste any startup time trying to negotiate an Android Auto connection. Video Resolution I didn't touch; whatever it chooses is correct for my head unit. Likewise for FPS. Media Delay you are supposed to change if the audio seems out of sync with the video. I'm not sure why that matters (I don't think CarPlay allows video apps!) but some people seem to feel the audio on their system lags relative to play/pause, so maybe changing this would help? Start Delay is, I THINK, if your head unit is really slow, so that the carlinkit is read and trying to talk to it before the head unit can answer. I set this to 1 (I think 0 means auto, so I wanted the fastest possible, without whatever delay auto imposes). GPS switches between using GPS from the phone and the GPS antenna of the head unit. Whether this works well or not depends on details of your system... In principle the car can have a much larger GPS antenna with better visibility. Or it might be a head unit like mine with no GPS antenna... Try it either way and see which seems better. For WiFi I chose the fastest option (again no wasting time negotiating). With all the above set, what's the situation? On the plus side the carlinkit 5, unlike the 3, has a bright led that changes colors to show you the steps as it is powering up. On the minus side, no actual improvement in start up time compared to the carlinkit 3 :-( Both take about a minute to get to audio. That seems like a failure BUT it's not as bad as it looks! The reason for the slowness is that the carlinkit gets power from the head unit. So the startup sequence looks like - car powers on - a few seconds later head unit powers on - after about 30 seconds (ridiculously slow, but what can you do) the head unit has booted up at which point (and only then, so stupid!) it supplies power to the USB cable that's the CarPlay input - this power starts the carlinkit which takes its own 30 seconds to start up. So how can we fix this? My solution was to buy this cable: xiwai Type-C USB-C to USB 3.0 Male & USB 2.0 Dual Power Data Y Cable for Laptop & Hard Disk https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VPNSMN8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title and plug the power USB-A connector into a USB-power jack (standard cigarette lighter to multiple USB ports thing that we all have) and to plug the data USB-A connector (the blue one) into the head unit CarPlay connector. Now when the car switches on - the head unit powers on - the carlinkit simultaneously powers on - the two pretty much simultaneously both reach a state of actually working, and time to audio is now 30 seconds rather than a minute! I might have been able to get this same speedup with the Y-cable and my old carlinkit 3. But the 5 does give me the colored LED status, it's slightly smaller, and the not-having to power cycle it and/or the head unit every so often is a nice bonus. I don't know how well the Android Auto part works, I've never needed that. But the CarPlay part is great! Just a shame that the manual is so awful and useless regarding first setup, and then detailed setup via the web page. (Oh, and quick hint. You can use Contact velcro strips to place it somewhere handy on the dashboard so it's out of the way but the led is still visible, nd you can still pull it off the dashboard every so often if you do need to move it.)

Corrupted my brand new car's panel. Car system was working great and then after using CarLink began to glitch. Device worked for 24h before it was perpetually "connecting" (dark blue blinking light) even though my phone was showing it was connected and opening Apple CarPlay, but CarPlay would not open on the car side. Had to factory reset the car and delete all the data. Then I had to re-set up my car's system. Time wasted. I tried troubleshooting from the carlink website and updated and then even rolled back the system to prior software with no luck. It is now a brick and I'm too scared to plug it back in to see if it can ever work again as the car is brand new and way more expensive than this piece of junk. Money wasted. Buyer beware.

It’s an interesting piece of tech. It does what it should. I tried this because I had some issues on my CX-30 with phones connecting and disconnecting when wired. I like that it auto connects. That part is generally pretty seamless. The first few times it was a pleasant surprise and then I got used to it. I didn’t notice until it didn’t happen once and I’m pretty sure it was me and weird Bluetooth/wireless configurations. In fact, I started by giving this four stars but on reflection, I think any issues I have with it are my own and the device works as it should. I’m a ridiculous techie and have a tendency to have several Bluetooth connections to my phone at once while driving: watch, some pogo catcher of sorts, driving devices, etc. Also I have two passengers who have several Bluetooth connections crossing paths not to mention the car’s WiFi. There’s a lot happening in my car. Again, I changed my review because awhile back, I had the same initial connection issues when I introduced the Spotify Bluetooth device they discontinued. I can say with confidence that my specific use case is not covered under most situations. Lots of beta devices. Never have an issue with a reasonable amount of Bluetooth devices connected to my phone simultaneously (and even unreasonable). Ok, so sound. It’s not lousy. I have stock speakers and they’re meh to begin with. I’d venture to guess if you had the Bose option speakers that you might notice a quality difference but I can’t speak to that. If there is a sound quality difference, I’d say it’s minimal but I’m also older now and am happy the tech works. It is also seamless with calls. No issues. I have only used this with iOS 17 and 18 beta. Have not tried switching to the android and mostly because I don’t want to create issues if there are any. I doubt it would but I’m set it and forget. On my stock CarPlay, I’d annoy myself by adding all of my devices and forgetting to change the hierarchy and it connecting to another random device so I just avoided that altogether for now. If I ever test it, will update comment with results. It’s been awhile but I recall set up being simple. Something about connecting to its WiFi me thinks. Oh this might mean that if you use your car WiFi you might have complications but can’t see why you’d do that with cellular often. Your hot spot uses cellular too so switching to it usually doesn’t help. I think I only noticed this because I tried to jump on it on my phone to share the password and a message pops up saying if you switch WiFi the device would disconnect. Connecting briefly pops up a menu screen on the console, I’m guessing to choose if you have multiple connections but since I only have one, it auto connects and moves on to the CarPlay screen.

This device makes it so easy to upgrade your stereo, as long as it supports Android Auto, it should work fine. I'm not sure how they do it, but the stereo and the phone don't know the difference. There are no sound problems. It feels and operates just like I plugged it in. I would have given 5 stars, but there are a few quirks. If there is any odd interference that causes the WIFI to disconnect, the radio will not go back to android auto and says to connect a device, but there is still music coming through (this might be my head unit though). Sometimes there is a race condition, and it will not connect. When this happens, I have had to unplug the unit from the USB port. This does not happen often and may be a quirk with my phone or head unit. Overall, I would definitely recommend this device to anyone who does not want to purchase another stereo to get wireless android auto support.

I purchased the original wireless Carplay dongle from Carlink back in January of 2020. YES--- you heard that correctly! Jan of 2020! I think I was one of the original buyers when they first released their dongles. I think I paid around $150 for it back then when it was new. I have been using it EVERYDAY for the past 5 years in my 2017 Honda Civic and it has served me well. There were little bugs here and there over the years but I kept the software updated and in time they fixed all the bugs. It is still working perfectly to this day which sounds hard to believe but it is true. The only reason why I decided to purchase their new 5.0 version is because the USB plug on my old dongle is a little loose. It works fine but if you touch it while plugged in it will reboot itself. I could keep using it but figured why not upgrade to a newer model after years of wear and tear from normal use. But 5 years of use is amazing and I swear I am not making that up! I have the Amazon reciept from 2020 to prove it! I recently tried using a different brand but it had all kinds of issues. Then I figured "why not go back to carlink since their original product served me well". I just picked up their new carlink 5.0 today and it is working flawlessly like my old dongle. The other brand I tried was losing the connection while I was on the phone. It looked like it was connected and the screen said it was but I couldn't hear them talking to me. Also, I have a seperate display by the speedometer that shows show album song and artwork (all Honda Civics have this). The album art was not showing up with the other brand I tried. I am not seeing these same issues with the carlink. Everything is working perfectly with the carlink. Time will tell if this product holds up but so far it is looking good. I may even purchase another one of these to give to a family member. If you want the best wireless carplay dongle, buy a carlink. ********** UPDATE. A couple of months later and the carlink 5.0 is still working great. I feel like it connects faster to the car then the older model and seems more responsive. It is a nice upgrade. But be aware... some people claim it is causing their carplay to disconnect from the car. THIS IS NOT TRUE. The PROBLEM IS APPLE. After months of complaining to Apple they finally admitted there is an issue with the combination of some iphones and certain cars. Carplay is crashing for some people especially while on phone calls. There is an apple software update coming soon that will help make carplay more stable. So don't blame Carlink.

Connection has a delay, but it’s expected with this type of device. However, the delay when on a phone call was extremely noticeable. Within the first few months of use, I started to have issues. First issue related to visual - glitches or artifacts on the screen appeared and made it difficult to read the map for navigation. I had to switch to another screen and back to completely refresh and fix itself. That worked for a minute or two before it started to glitch again. Second issue related to audio - all audio periodically went silent. I had to pause audio, wait a few seconds, and then resume. Sometimes that fixed the issue for a while and other times it would go silent again almost right away. I tried factory resetting the device and going through the setup process again. The problems persisted. I’m disappointed with the performance. I’m not sure if this was a dud or indicative of a widespread issue with build quality. I’ve been using a different wireless adapter by Anyfar for the last couple of weeks with faster connection times and no issues yet. Also, Anyfar only requires a Bluetooth connection instead of both wifi and Bluetooth that Carlin requires.

I had the previous version of the CarlinKit which worked well but would drop connection in certain areas around town. I thought the upgrade version might be better. The Good: when the CarlinKit does connect, the connection seems more stable than the previous version The Bad: more times than not the CarlinKit does not connect with my phone when starting my Jeep, even in areas where there are no other devices/signals; the CarlinKit Bluetooth shows on the phone but does not allow a connection with the phone. When this happened I had to delete (forget) on the phone both the bluetooth and wifi of the CarlinKit and then go through the steps for an initial setup. This happened frequently. The Ugly: When the CarlinKit drops connection while driving, it locks the entire head unit and the only way to recover is to disconnect the device, turn off the head unit, and try again (usually multiple times) to reconnect the CarlinKit and phone ... not fun while driving and relying on directions. This would not always work, then I would have to delete the CarlinKit bluetooth and wifi on the phone and re-setup. Note that I am using an iPhone 15 in a 2018 Jeep Wrangler. The iPhone connects every time to the Jeep bluetooth (when the CarlinKit is not plugged in). The iPhone connects every time to my Infiniti Q60 wireless CarPlay. I have never had an issue with the phone connecting to other bluetooth devices or wifi networks. The previous version of CarlinKit did not have this issue, thus I have returned this version and went back to using the previous version. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS ITEM ... RETURNED

I wanted to use it in 2018 Audi Q7 Prestige in combination with iPhone 13. Set up is easy and it seemed to work well. However, every time I use it the connection is initially clear but starts progressively having interferences like radio static. Those get so bad that listening becomes impossible. If I then jump back to weird connection there are no problems. Unfortunately I’m out of the return window. Waste of money for me.