CarlinKit 5 offers solid wireless CarPlay… most of the time

If you’ve driven a car made in the past decade, you’ve probably already used Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, which mirrors your phone’s contents onto your car’s infotainment screen. Both features are a big step forward over Bluetooth audio, but there’s a potential downside: Most of the time, you’ll have to connect your phone to your car using a USB cable. Wireless CarPlay and Android Auto options are available on premium cars and pricier trim levels, but they’re far from common.

So what do you do if you’re stuck using wired CarPlay or Android Auto? Behold the wireless dongle. Plug one of these boxes into your car’s USB port, pair your phone, and voila, you have a phone mirror without any messy cables.

Although there are a large number of dongles on the market, I recently made a purchase Carlin Kate 5 They mostly offer a solid wireless CarPlay experience. It was easy to set up on my 2019 Volvo XC90: I just had to plug it in and pair my phone via Bluetooth (all the copying work is done over a local Wi-Fi connection between the devices). Now when I get into my car, I never think to plug in a USB-C cable — CarPlay automatically launches and starts playing whatever I’m currently listening to.

Sound quality is great, and I didn’t notice any significant lag while scrolling through the CarPlay interface. Siri voice commands, something I rely on a lot while driving, also work as well as wired CarPlay (most of the time they’re accurate, but sometimes background noise results in responses that are off-base). CarLinkIt also works seamlessly with volume and track-changing controls on the steering wheel.

While I Good I realize that plugging in a USB-C cable doesn’t seem like a major inconvenience, and in fact it may be an example of a first-world problem, an issue that has bothered me across many cars. USB-C cables (and Apple’s Thunderbolt cable before them) bend and break easily, especially when you try to cram them into tight car accessory compartments. Phone charging ports also accumulate debris that can make connections unstable. After several cable failures on long flights, I’ve had enough.

I’m honestly surprised that my experience with wireless CarPlay resulted in far fewer problems than using a simple cable. This goes directly against my typical motto for any type of device: a wired connection is usually best. However, in this case, I didn’t have to fight with CarLinkIt 5 much. It works 90 percent of the time, and only occasionally has connectivity issues if I’m tethering my phone to my kid’s tablets (I bet there’s some kind of Wi-Fi conflict going on there). In these cases, disconnecting and reconnecting CarlinKit resolves the issue.

My wife was also able to pair with CarlinKit and that was helpful for her as well. If we’re together in a Volvo, we just have to choose which phone we want to mirror while CarPlay is on. I was concerned about copy conflicts, but overall it didn’t cause us too much trouble.

The downside to using wireless CarPlay is that your phone doesn’t automatically charge when it’s connected to your car. So you’ll either have to use a wireless charging pad built into your car, or get some sort of accessory to handle that. I use iOttie MagSafe Vent ChargerAnd it works like a dream. I don’t use it on short trips, but when I need to wake up, I throw away my phone and rely on the magic of magnets and wireless charging.

CarlinKit is one of those devices that you never have to think about, except for the occasional disconnect/reconnect reset. To address compatibility issues, the company releases firmware updates that you can make Install wirelessly via your phone. (There’s also a more complicated way to update the firmware via USB, but I haven’t had to deal with it.) Beyond that, it doesn’t require a lot of babysitting. In fact, isn’t that exactly what we want from every single-purpose tool?