XtremeMac InCharge Auto BT review/discussion (with pics)

WiredPirate · Feb 21, 2012

I recieved my Xtrememac incharge BT for use in the car. It's $80 but found it for $18 from nothingbutsoftware.com, strange I couldn't complete the purchase on my iPad. I'm glad it wouldn't let me cause it was $30 on the iPad but then when I shared the URL to my Nexus the price was $18. I purchased it for $18 and recieved it today. The audio quality is amazing! Even better than using 3.5mm jack from phone to aux in! I am using Volume+ but have the same settings for both wired headset and bt. I couldn't be happier with my purchase so I thought I would share. You just plug into the car charger and 3.5 jack into aux in, pair, and your done. No cables to phone and no call quality is great. The aux in part functions as a mic and button to answer/end calls. And the car charger part has a USB port for charging phone, it comes with an iPhone/iPad charger but you can plug in any USB cable for charge. Let me know if you have any questions. Hope someone else enjoys this as much as me.

Here are some pics. Disregard how messy my car is, I didn't have time to clean, vacuum, armor-all and such. I dont have time for much of anything these days cause I work in a tax office and I'm sure you know what that means this time of year. Hell I shouldn't even have time to occupy these forums but what can I say - my hobby. I took these just now spur of the moment to clear up any confusion. Also I took the picks with my GN, of course.

And just for kicks, here are some NFC tags. The left one toggles BT. The right one toggles from Auto-brightness to Brightness value 0 (completely dim - I hate bright screens). The reason these are not combined into one tag is because at night I dont need to toggle brightness.

Penutbutter_N_Jelly · Feb 21, 2012

About to get this but I'm not seeing the $18 price. Only $ 29.99. Even tried sharing the link

WiredPirate · Feb 21, 2012

Penutbutter_N_Jelly said:
About to get this but I'm not seeing the $18 price. Only $ 29.99. Even tried sharing the link

Not sure how I pulled this off.. looked on the iPad and it was $30, couldn't purchase so I used Read It Later to share the link to my Nexus, opened it and it was $18. Surprised the hell out of me too. Maybe it was a glitch!? But I am not going crazy, that is the price I bought it for.

Even at $30 its a good purchase and with a retail price of $80 (which is a little ridiculous imo) you cant beat it.

raing · Feb 21, 2012

What is the reason for this? At first I thought you plug it into your phone.. but then that made absolutely no sense to me... Do you plug it into your head unit? If I understand correctly, it is for head units that do not have bluetooth?

Wouldn't it be easier / cheaper / better audio quality to just plug Male to Male 3.5mm in?

(I have a pioneer aftermarket head unit with built in bluetooth and have no experience with not having bluetooth.. so my thoughts on the matter are biased).

Penutbutter_N_Jelly · Feb 21, 2012

WiredPirate said:
Not sure how I pulled this off.. looked on the iPad and it was $30, couldn't purchase so I used Read It Later to share the link to my Nexus, opened it and it was $18. Surprised the hell out of me too. Maybe it was a glitch!? But I am not going crazy, that is the price I bought it for. Even at $30 its a good purchase and with a retail price of $80 (which is a little ridiculous imo) you cant beat it.

Hmm... I got impatient and just ordered on amazon for 25 + free shipping. I was just thinking i need something like this (I despise wires) and when I saw your post this morning all I could think was "I need this!!!"
$18-25... not much of a difference. Like you said, much better than the $80 retail.
Thanks for posting this dude!

raing said:
What is the reason for this? At first I thought you plug it into your phone.. but then that made absolutely no sense to me... Do you plug it into your head unit? If I understand correctly, it is for head units that do not have bluetooth?

Wouldn't it be easier / cheaper / better audio quality to just plug Male to Male 3.5mm in?

(I have a pioneer aftermarket head unit with built in bluetooth and have no experience with not having bluetooth.. so my thoughts on the matter are biased).

Basically it's to eliminate wires.
My aux input is in my center console (right next to a power port so this works out nice) and when using 3.5mm it just seems sloppy to me with the wire being pinched in the console lid and such...

Hopefully it sounds as good for me as it does for WiredPirate.

WiredPirate · Feb 21, 2012

raing said:
What is the reason for this? At first I thought you plug it into your phone.. but then that made absolutely no sense to me... Do you plug it into your head unit? If I understand correctly, it is for head units that do not have bluetooth?

Wouldn't it be easier / cheaper / better audio quality to just plug Male to Male 3.5mm in?

(I have a pioneer aftermarket head unit with built in bluetooth and have no experience with not having bluetooth.. so my thoughts on the matter are biased).

Did you even read the OP? I explained the function - NO WIRES TO PHONE. And I stated that this sounds BETTER than using the 3.5mm cable. Give me a minute and I will take a pic for you.
As far as the Pioneer BT deck I have one as well. Sitting in my closet. I loved it in my Crown Vic but after buying a new off the lot vehicle I couldn't bring myself to tear up the dash, maybe I will in the future, but for now this works great.

Edit: Uploaded some pics for you bud.

smot13 · Feb 21, 2012

Can you link to it on amazon? I cant seem to locate it.

machiz7888 · Feb 21, 2012

WiredPirate said:
Did you even read the OP? I explained the function - NO WIRES TO PHONE. And I stated that this sounds BETTER than using the 3.5mm cable. Give me a minute and I will take a pic for you.
As far as the Pioneer BT deck I have one as well. Sitting in my closet. I loved it in my Crown Vic but after buying a new off the lot vehicle I couldn't bring myself to tear up the dash, maybe I will in the future, but for now this works great.

Edit: Uploaded some pics for you bud.

that doesn't make sense to me.

3.5 cable = nexus to car.

Bluetooth = nexus to bluetooth to car... via 3.5 cable.

How could it possibly sound better? the 3.5 cable is still in there plus one extra step

4Pr3mier · Feb 21, 2012

Wiredpirate,

Say you have already set up the BT connection to the phone.
The next time you get in the car, do you have to turn on or press any button to connect or does it automatically search and connect to your phone once you turn on the ignition? TIA

Knolly · Feb 21, 2012

Just to throw this out there, Belkin Aircast is very similar to this:
http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=542721

Definitely more expensive though although you can get it for $30 on sale every now and then. It works exactly the same way except it also has a large button that you can put wherever that acts as a pause/play/answer/hangup button and also houses a microphone in it. I have this setup in my Ford Fiesta and love it.

biggiestuff · Feb 21, 2012

I just use my MW600 in similar fashion but at least I can use it for headphones when I'm away from the car as well like for jogging or listening to music elsewhere.

Pricier of course but a little bit more versatile. Roughly about 46 bucks.

4Pr3mier · Feb 21, 2012

Knolly said:
Just to throw this out there, Belkin Aircast is very similar to this:
http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=542721

Definitely more expensive though although you can get it for $30 on sale every now and then. It works exactly the same way except it also has a large button that you can put wherever that acts as a pause/play/answer/hangup button and also houses a microphone in it. I have this setup in my Ford Fiesta and love it.

I was looking at that also, but I read from reviews that you have to press a button to make a connection every time it powers on. Is this true? I'm also turned away by that big button so I'd probably tried to hide it from sight.

Another option is the Griffin BlueTrip, but it is also very pricey.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KPLS7K/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

$30 is not bad at all for these types of devices, especially if it has an extra USB port.

droidkevlar · Feb 21, 2012

Nice. My head unit has BT but not for audio. I wonder if I added this would I still be able ot stream music to the car and then for answering a call, go through my head unit? Anyone have an idea on this?

Penutbutter_N_Jelly · Feb 21, 2012

Here is where mine's going.

Nice and stealth once the lid is down

smot13 said:
Can you link to it on amazon? I cant seem to locate it.

THIS is the one I ordered

4Pr3mier said:
Wiredpirate,

Say you have already set up the BT connection to the phone.
The next time you get in the car, do you have to turn on or press any button to connect or does it automatically search and connect to your phone once you turn on the ignition? TIA

I'm wondering this too

droidkevlar · Feb 22, 2012

Penutbutter_N_Jelly said:
THIS is the one I ordered

THanks. Will def be checking this out soon

WiredPirate · Feb 22, 2012

machiz7888 said:
that doesn't make sense to me.

3.5 cable = nexus to car.

Bluetooth = nexus to bluetooth to car... via 3.5 cable.

How could it possibly sound better? the 3.5 cable is still in there plus one extra step

Sound logic. Regardless, the fact remains that it sounds better/louder. Again I'm using the same setting in Volume plus for both bt and wired.

4Pr3mier said:
Wiredpirate,

Say you have already set up the BT connection to the phone.
The next time you get in the car, do you have to turn on or press any button to connect or does it automatically search and connect to your phone once you turn on the ignition? TIA

Turn on the ignition, hit the one power/phone/end/answer button located on the plug in to the aux in, and it's auto paired in 3 seconds or less.

Knolly · Feb 22, 2012

WiredPirate said:
Sound logic. Regardless, the fact remains that it sounds better/louder. Again I'm using the same setting in Volume plus for both bt and wired.

If you charge your phone while it's plugged in via 3.5mm you can get interference due to the phone being grounded or something something. Someone explained it better in the thread about the pogo pin car dock, as that's why the official car dock for the Galaxy Nexus uses BT audio despite being physically connected.

4Pr3mier said:
I was looking at that also, but I read from reviews that you have to press a button to make a connection every time it powers on. Is this true? I'm also turned away by that big button so I'd probably tried to hide it from sight.

It depends if your cigarette lighter socket turns off and on with the car. If it does go on and off with the car, it'll just auto search for a phone when the car starts. If it always provides power (like mine), you do have to hit the button just once. I mean it's a quick tap I just do it automatically when starting my car now, not a burden to do at all.

machiz7888 · Feb 22, 2012

WiredPirate said:
Sound logic. Regardless, the fact remains that it sounds better/louder. Again I'm using the same setting in Volume plus for both bt and wired.

Turn on the ignition, hit the one power/phone/end/answer button located on the plug in to the aux in, and it's auto paired in 3 seconds or less.

Hah love the pun.

WiredPirate · Feb 22, 2012

Knolly said:
If you charge your phone while it's plugged in via 3.5mm you can get interference due to the phone being grounded or something something. Someone explained it better in the thread about the pogo pin car dock, as that's why the official car dock for the Galaxy Nexus uses BT audio despite being physically connected.

It's actually very simple to explain. Speaker wires and power wires do not play nice together, anytime you have a power wire and speaker wire parallel to each other or crossing paths in certain ways you will get interference. (it must be a nightmare to the techs that set up for concerts and such). I know this because when I was younger I installed quite a few subs in different vehicles. There are ways to run the wires to reduce/eliminate interference. But do note in the picture, the way this is set up, the cable from the USB charger and the cable running to the aux in do not cross paths. I did use the charger last night while listening to music, no interference. Now if you have the cables all loose and tangled or crossing, I imagine you can expect some, sooo DON'T DO THAT.

the same can be said about using a 3.5mm cable and a car charger, if the wires cross paths/ tangle/ whatever, you will get interference.

machiz7888 said:
Hah love the pun.

Thank you sir.

but in all seriousness I did not expect this to sound as good as it does, much less BETTER than the 3.5mm cable I had previously been using. I guess it's possible this thing has some kind of built in amplification, but I have no idea if it does or not.

WiredPirate · Feb 25, 2012

4Pr3mier said:
Wiredpirate,

Say you have already set up the BT connection to the phone.
The next time you get in the car, do you have to turn on or press any button to connect or does it automatically search and connect to your phone once you turn on the ignition? TIA

Turn on the ignition, hit the one power/phone/end/answer button located on the plug in to the aux in, and it's auto paired in 3 seconds or less.

UPDATE: the above statement is true if you already have bt enabled on your phone before starting the ignition. However, if bt is turned off when you start your ignition, the xtremeMac will auto pair up upon enabling bt.

XtremeMac InCharge Auto BT review/discussion (with pics)

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