Fastest Booting Wireless Apple CarPlay Dongle Yet! | Ottocast Wireless CarPlay Adapter U2-NOW Review

UPDATE 11 Aug 2021: It has come to my attention that these dongles are being sold with a bright green coloured version of AUTOKIT, it will carry the same speed as the one in this review.

Enjoy my Ottocast Wireless CarPlay Adapter U2-NOW Review. You can buy the Ottocast Wireless Apple CarPlay Adapter for $127.95 from Amazon US → https://amzn.to/3f3LzZl or for £127 from Amazon UK → https://amzn.to/3eKUSND.

This dongle is an updated version to their U2-ONE wireless CarPlay dongle, with a new case design and a different red coloured user interface that some of you might have seen on some other dongle brands. It’s unknown if the chipset inside is any better, but from my tests I have already seen faster boot-up times than on the other dongles that I have tested. Yet its wireless chipset is still Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) with a max data rate of 300.

There is a female USB-A port on the other end of the dongle. This port can be used to pass power through to a connected USB cable for charging your phone or any other device without removing the dongle from the same USB port in your car. Ottocast doesn’t advise this port for charging, but it is possible to do so. They say this port is for updating (although until March this was all done over the air) and for collecting logs for support.

You'll see how much faster this dongle boots into CarPlay, and for me, that’s a total game-changer. When you compare the boot time of the other dongles that I have reviewed, their boot time was twice as long as this dongle from Ottocast.

Performance and stability have been good so far, although I did a 7-hour drive and the dongle crashed almost exactly after 2-hours of running. This is still a common occurrence with most dongles I've tested, so its situation normal.

I tried connecting the dongle’s USB-A port to my iPhone or charger managed to crash the dongle. I was able to continue after the reboot with my phone charging. After some use, the dongle can run pretty warm, but that’s no different to most of the other dongles, really.

Steering wheel controls were working fine for me, including previous and next buttons and enabling Siri via the call accept button. I still wasn’t able to hold these buttons down to fast-forward or rewind through tracks.

Siri worked just fine both in dictation and playback. Calls made over the wireless dongle seemed decent without any noticeable lag, but I wasn’t making any long calls with it. I was able to play system audio, such as listening to FM or DAB radio alongside wireless CarPlay apps, with navigation directions cutting into the audio feed from the system without any issues. Turn by turn prompts had no delay to them and onscreen navigation was fast.

Out of all the wireless CarPlay dongles I have reviewed on this channel, which just offer wireless CarPlay, the speed increase alone justifies recommending this dongle over some of the other wireless CarPlay dongles that are out there. With its boot-up speed, custom options in the menu to easily swap between connecting devices and also set delays for your system, there are a lot of important features here to justify the increased price over some of the cheaper wireless CarPlay dongles that are out there. So if you’re looking to upgrade your current dongle or you are just about to buy one, I would definitely put this dongle from Ottocast on your radar.

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TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro
0:20 - Overview
1:00 - Why use a wireless dongle
1:50 - Unboxing
2:15 - Size & Features
3:24 - Install & Boot-up
4:03 - Boot screen & pairing
4:35 - Wireless CarPlay
5:36 - Boot-up speed test
7:07 - Full system boot speed test
8:00 - Boot menu & settings
10:01 - Boot menu into CarPlay speed test
10:25 - Firmware update check & settings
12:25 - My impressions
16:47 - Compatibility with your car

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EQUIPMENT IN THIS VIDEO:
If you are curious how this video was filmed and what equipment was used or the products you see around or behind me. Checkout My Setup page here → https://www.carplaylife.com/mysetup

#CarPlay #Wireless #Ottocasti

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