Design
Belkin's TuneCast 3 is an FM audio transmitter designed primarily for in-car use. Where its predecessor had a small and distinctly iPod-coloured stubby body that was quickly prone to becoming grubby, the TuneCast 3 more resembles a tiny MP3 player in its own right. It feels and looks an awful lot like the Creative Zen V Plus, in fact, right down to the onboard colour screen. Buttons on the TuneCast 3's face control the two station presets -- so you can switch to another frequency where you come into range of a competing station -- as well as manually change the frequency, while side-mounted buttons switch between stereo and mono transmission, and switch the TuneCast 3 on.
One of the lesser changes from TuneCast II to TuneCast 3 (aside from the strange switch away from Roman numerals) is in the promotion of the device; while the TuneCast II was promoted as an iPod product -- but could work with any player with a 3.5mm audio port -- the TuneCast 3 proudly proclaims that you can "Listen to any MP3 player in your car" with it. No great change of course, and Belkin's not daft; it still lists the exact iPod models that work with it on the back; the fourth generation plus of the base iPod, Nano and Mini to be exact. The omission of the Shuffle is a mystery, but we can't see why it wouldn't work.
The TuneCast 3 also comes with an in-car cigarette lighter adaptor, which will power but not charge the TuneCast 3, and a small mounting dock for sticking the Tunecast 3 to your car dashboard.
Features
The TuneCast 3 takes any audio source and transmits it on a set FM frequency. That's got to be the easiest write-up I've ever done of a product here at CNET.com.au, and that is basically what the TuneCast 3 does, although to be fair it's also what its predecessors did. There are a few key differences that this iteration has introduced, however, and not all of them are entirely positive. On the plus side, the colour screen display of the TuneCast 3 is much easier to read in both bright and dark conditions, and the car mounting kit means it's easy to place it within the driver's view, so you don't need to suffer through crackly reception simply because it's not safe to switch channels.
On the downside, two features have been stripped from the TuneCast 3 that were present in its predecessor. Firstly, it doesn't have the ability to automatically power on the device when it detects an audio source. This is one of the nicer aspects of the TuneCast II; you just power up your iPod (or compatible player) and the TuneCast II will fire itself up while you get on with the driving. The TuneCast 3 can at least detect when the audio signal's gone missing; if you leave it sans sound for ten minutes it'll automatically power down. Secondly, the TuneCast II offered four user-defined preset FM channels, where the TuneCast 3 only offers two.
Performance
It did take us some time to adjust to the TuneCast 3 transmitter, primarily due to the lack of automatic power-on, and the slower start-up time, which is indicated on the display as an expanding bar. Once we'd installed it and had some minor play, it quickly became second nature. Belkin rates the TuneCast 3 as having "up to" 20 hours of battery life, although that's a highly relative figure depending on how keen you are on cheap alkaline batteries.
We tested the TuneCast 3 head-to-head with the older TuneCast II, driving around Sydney's busy -- and rather radio-soaked -- streets. The difference between the two units placed at the exact same distance from our car radio was remarkable. In areas where the older TuneCast II simply gave up and let stronger signals kill our musical enjoyment the TuneCast 3 powered through, albeit with some crackly performance. This is where the otherwise stupid-seeming mono option also comes into play. If you're prepared to sacrifice a little audio quality -- and if you're listening to already compressed MP3 music through a car stereo over FM transmission, it's probably a safe guess that you're not that fussy -- then switching to mono can greatly improve the signal pickup, and turn a crackly stereo track into a smooth single-source audio experience. The included car docking station also improved signal reception, at least in our test example, because our dashboard had plenty of space to put the transmitter right next to the radio itself.
It's a bit of a tough sell to suggest that existing users of the TuneCast II (or, for that matter, any competing FM Transmitter -- well, maybe not the i-rocks Car DJ) should pick up the TuneCast 3 as an upgrade path, but for those who want to make their portable music players into transport-able music players, the TuneCast 3 is an exceptionally good buy.
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