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It's a bit late in the week for our first gadget review but the Labor Day holiday wreaks havoc with our workflow for depositing the product endorsement checks. We're working to turn this into a completely paperless process. Until then we're left with a cumbersome payment system left over from the fifties.

The 12 Volt automotive cigarette lighter has also been with us in its present form since the fifties. Gas is unleaded now and even unneeded in today's most sophisticated rides. Though the cigarette lighter itself seems quite archaic, the socket it spawned is still a relative youngster in the slow moving world of automotive technology. It is newer than radios, fuel injection, electric cars, and anti-lock brakes.

The cigarette lighter socket is about 70 years newer than the phono jack, thought its smaller 3.5mm mini phono jack cousin is about the same age. I have never owned a car without a cigarette lighter jack and I have never yet owned a car 'new' enough to include a direct 3.5mm jack into the audio system. My lo-fi tunes are typically passed through a small coil into the magnetic head of a tape deck.

It is into this vintage environment that I introduced the TuneLink Auto from New Potato Technologies. This is a simple device that works well. It fits in a 12 Volt cigarette lighter outlet and provides a USB charger and a Bluetooth A2DP stereo audio gateway in its medium-size enclosure. The audio is output through either 3.5mm mini jack or on-board FM transmitter.

TuneLink pictured with Betty O'Shannon for scale
Photo courtesy your correspondent

This is my third A2DP bridge for the car. I've used units from RIM and Belkin that were intended for home use and always been displeased by the tangle of wires these units leave. The TuneLink is simple and mechanically uncluttered.

It is a bit logically cluttered. When I first paired my telephone to the device, I got an unexpected 'this accessory requires an app' notice from my phone and feared the worst. Most of these helper apps are obnoxious at best. The device almost went back right then.

I braved the App Store and downloaded the 'TuneLink' app and quickly forgot about it. It is mercifully only required if you don't care for the defaults and then only to change them. You may need it once or never if you are using the mini jack for output as I do. The app provides the only interface to change the FM transmitter settings.

You can use the app to set two useful bits in the device. The first is an 'auto play' flag that will simulate an AVRCP 'play' command when the TuneLink device connects to the phone. I found it to be irritating and the default. I changed it and never looked back. The second is an 'auto connect' flag. This setting mirrored the behavior of my earlier bridges and all the in-car bluetooth headsets I've used. It was on by default. I found that the FM transmitter was also on by default and was spamming one of my favorite local radio stations. It was easy to switch off.

The TuneLink will pair with several devices, though it will only connect with one at a time. Apple devices seem a bit greedy about connecting to these audio devices as soon it sees them. I would often prefer that my phone or tablet continue to connect automatically but only when they actually have something to play.

The unit may be just as large as it needs to be. I find it to be fifty percent larger than it seems like it ought to be.

I bought my unit in June. I use it constantly. I didn't remove it from the car until yesterday and then only to take a picture. Inexpensive A2DP-ready replacement automotive head units are now available for not much more than the price of this relatively expensive ($90) adapter. I generally prefer the design, integration, and tactile feedback of OEM units. I usually also stick to the provided steering wheel.