James Cridland

Review of a Carlink Mini Ultra 1 Wireless Carplay dongle

What came in the packet

So, I have my fancy new electric car, an MG 4, and it has Apple CarPlay in it. You plug your phone in, and it works. And it’s very nice.

Except… if you plug in your phone before the in-car software has booted, then it never sees your phone. So you need to get in the car, watch the boot up sequence, and only when the boot sequence has actually finished, then connect the phone. And all this plugging and unplugging probably isn’t great for my phone, I thought.

So, looking in a Facebook group, I discover the “Carlink Mini Ultra 1” device, which I thought would do just the trick. It turns wired CarPlay cars into wireless ones. And there was a link to Ali Express, which I don’t normally use, so I used it to discover that, and I don’t know how this works, this device cost AUD$5.26 - that’s $3.43 or £2.57. Including shipping. As a “welcome deal”.

I have no idea how anyone earns any money from this. It’s coming from somewhere in China. The official price is $129.95 and I think that’s an AU price.

Anyway, I figured it would be rubbish and probably wouldn’t work, and probably wouldn’t arrive. But for $5 that’s just fine.

So I ordered it on Friday. And I got it today (Thursday).

Above is the little envelope, and what was in it - the Carlink unit itself, in a blister pack, and a surprise USB-A to USB-C connector.

The back of the blister pack

The back of the tiny little package that the Carlink unit came in had a barcode that presumably linked to the manual. (I went here).

To be fair, it’s pretty impressive. I was able to upgrade the firmware to the latest version (you connect to its own wifi, and then look at 192.168.50.100 which is a little web page with everything on).

The web-page connection

That web-page also lets you set an initial timeout. So, if it gets power (the car’s been turned on), you can get to wait a number of seconds before it turns on the CarPlay bit. Problem sorted with the delay in connection.

Then, connect to the Bluetooth of the unit, whereupon it triggers the CarPlay connect dialog box, and away it goes.

So far, there’s little discernable difference between the wired connection and the wireless through this thing. After a few days with it, I notice:

  • I can see my battery level displayed in CarPlay - probably important, since my car won’t charge the phone any longer
  • There appears to be a second’s delay to buffer the audio; so things that happen on-screen appear to happen a second later in the speakers. Skipping forward in a podcast means pressing the skip button, then waiting, assuming you’ve not pressed it, press it again, and then it skips forward twice.
  • The car no longer appears to get the “now playing” information for the car’s own infotainment screen.

Not bad for $5. I’m not sure it’s worth $129. But for $5? Seems good so far…

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