Top Mp3 Options For Your Car

It’s been a while since car CD players were an end-all solution to the music-in-the-car problem. When we moved from cassettes to CDs, the car CD players were the best thing we could think of. When MP3s turned up, we had upgraded to MP3 CD players in our cars. And then came along car DVD players. But even 4.35 gigs of MP3s are not enough. Now we have iPods and other music players with 30 or 60 gigs of music that we don’t want to burn on discs just for the car. So what options do you have?

In this guide we'll look at a few car CD receivers (players, head units, whatever you call them) that will let you preserve your iPod (or any other MP3 player) investment and let you play music in your car without burning a single disc.

There are essentially four types of such head unit categories—iPod ready, AUX in, USB in and Bluetooth. There’s also a new type with flash memory built in.

More from News Analysis

First up, there are head units with with iPod connectivity using adapters that work only with iPods and let you browse your music using the head unit itself (without touching the iPod). Most of these adapters are external accessories that connect to 'iPod Ready' head units, but unfortunately, they are not available in India right now, so we won't be talking about these models in this article. Sorry!

There are simpler ones with auxiliary inputs that can take in any audio input—be it an iPod or a Zen or a Walkman or even a little cassette player—but you need to browse and play music using that device itself, as the head unit will only take whatever audio input its getting and play it. A few of these with convenient front inputs are available in India, so we'll look at those.

__PAGEBREAK__

All Sony head units are rated at 52Wx4, while Pioneer ones are 50Wx4, unless specified otherwise.

Sony CDX-GT250S (Rs. 5,250)