CarlinKit 5.0 Wireless CarPlay/Android Auto Adapter USB for Factory Wired Cars (Model Year: 2015 to 2025), 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-cycled2. about once a month the negotiation between the carlinkit and the kenwood would hang, and the kenwood would have to be power-cycled3. 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 nextUnfortunately 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 Diskhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VPNSMN8?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_titleand 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.)

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 versionThe 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

Works okay for what it is. It typically connects to my phone very quickly, and the connection is stable. I've noticed that it can get laggy sometimes, but I'm not sure if that's an issue with the device itself or my truck's head unit. Sometimes it resolves itself if I go to the truck's main menu and then back into CarPlay. Other times, quickly unplugging it from the USB port and plugging it back in works. Another issue is that it always seems to keep CarPlay in dark mode, rather than following the headlight settings. I need to test this out and determine if it's a problem with my vehicle (e.g. not sending headlight or ambient light sensor info to CarPlay) or a problem with the device.