iTrip Review

twister

twister

Howdy
Day One:

I found out Wednesday at 12am that iTrips were being sold at Apple stores. Sure enough i stopped by my local Apple store and picked up an iTrip Wednesday afternoon. After which I canceled my order and told Griffin Technologies how pissed off i was that my order, placed in mid March, was still backordered with no estimated shipping date.

First off it's damn small. I knew it would be but WOW it's tiny. I have a 20 gig and I'm not fond of how hard i have to push to get it to sit in my firewire port. If i don't push hard enough it pops back out and powers off. Plus i have to keep the little firewire cover open. I don't want to remove that because I won't always have the iTrip hooked up.

The setup is fun and easy. It comes with 102 stations to choose from too. Setup is easy and you can change the station whenever you want.

It did an OK job of transmitting to my radio. I think i'll have to do a lot of fiddling to find the right station. First off i was not impressed at all. I didn't seem to get a good, clear signal. But after some work i got a different station to work better. Still that wasn't what i expected. Not clear enough. When i got home I played some more and found a station that seemed to work GREAT from every seat in my car (front and back) so now i'll just have to drive around more and see if it stays nice and clear.

My first impressions are not that great. It's not amazing, it's not even great. It's just ok so far. Hopefully after some testing, and if i find the perfect station, it'll be awesome!
 
Any noticable battery drain? Did you get a lot of stations that bleed signals over to you? I found using the soundfeeder that I was constantly having to fiddle with the knob to keep stations from pouring over and messing with the iPod signal. The iRock only offers 4 stations choices, but I found that a lot more stable as you know exactly where the signal is and it locks into it pretty well.
 
iTrip locks into stations just as good as iRock does only with MANY more choices. I also haven't noticed a battery drain yet as it's to new.
 
Day two:

I only drive a mile to the bus station and then a mile back today so i didn't get much testing done. However my station that i though would work nice, didn't. Sure it worked good when i wasn't moving but then it faded in and out as i drove to the bus stop. Also i noticed that the iTrip turns on a few seconds after the iPod starts playing. So you miss the first few seconds of the first song. No cool there.

Still searching for that perfect station.
 
iRock does a good job at transmitting for me, however i have gone through three iRocks because it seems that the cord keeps breaking internally. I'm not rough on it so i don't know what's up with that. Also i hate having to replace my batteries every few weeks in iRock.
 
I just had a good experience. I drove the 5 miles to work and realized that if i turned down the iPods volume to 50% it worked better. Maybe it was that or the new station i picked or the different spot in my car i put my iPod (affixed to the dash instead of sitting on the seat) or who knows what. But on my way to work iTrip worked nicely.
 
If I remember correctly, you will get a better "carrier" of sound on the higher end of the FM band than the lower...so 106,107.x is going to work better than 88.5 on the low end side.

Of course, I could be full of it as well... you'll just have to make that judgement yourself.

Scott
 
It probably matters more where stations are grouped where you are. It seems to me that more stations are grouped in the lower end of the spectrum than the higher ends so there's probably more chance of a station bleed on those end. Likewise, the more stations there are and interference, the harder it will be to maintain a lock on a frequency, especially in a moving vehicle.
 
In the japan folder thare are more lower frequencys. I added some of the lower end 80's stations and found one that works great! I had no loss of signal and it worked pretty sweet.
 
Well i found that perfect station. I think it's 87.5. I don't loose the signal, it doesn't fade in our out, and works great!

I haven't done testing on battery wear because i just don't have that kinda time.

Once you get it to work it's pretty spiffy. Now i just have to get rid of those other 100 iTrip stations so they don't play when i randomly hit play.
 
I am not happy with my iTrip. While the device itself is elegant, small, and "a thumbs up", the broadcast is ... not so much!

I have tried several stations and feel that there is moderate static on all stations -- unless you live in the desert, it seems that I hear static no matter what. In fact, I actually don't think that it even depends where you live. I tried LOTS of stations and feel that ALL of them had static to some degree or another. Plus, even the "best" static station sounded a bit "tinny" and "hollow." :(

I will give it another week, but I am sad to see that this iTrip user is likely to return his!
 
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