Product review - NAZTECH N3050 FM TRANSMITTER & CAR HOLDER

The nice people at My Trendy Phone have, once again, very kindly asked me if I wanted to review one of their products. I'm no techie but it's always good to see what is on the market and try out something I might not otherwise be aware of.

I decided that the Naztech N3050 FM Transmitter and Car Holder which also doubles up as a car charger might well be a useful addition to my car as I am one of those people who is constantly losing their phone under the seat or running down their battery just before I need to make an important call (not whilst driving of course!)

My reviews are always totally honest as otherwise there would be no point doing them.

It is a robust piece of kit that you plug into the lighter socket in your car - I'm sure it is no longer called that but you know what I mean.  There is an adjustable holder for your phone and it functions as an FM transmitter, car charger and speakerphone, enabling you to talk handsfree.  It has a decent sized gooseneck that you can move around in order to find the best possible position in your car and is infinitely bendable. Now there's a good technical term! It is compatible with the iPhone 4 and 5 as well as most other smartphones. A great little smartphone cable is included that is just long enough to run from the USB socket to your phone but if you want to use it with an iPhone you will need to buy a dedicated one.  The downside of that is that you get a bit of a tangle of cables around the gearstick so unless you know where to buy a very short iPhone cable I would say this is probably more suited to smartphones.  That said, I do use it to charge my Kindle in the car now and it is perfect for that as it reaches to the passenger seat.

I liked the fact that it was solid and felt very durable but I did struggle to find a good position where it was out of the way of the gear stick. In fairness though, my car has six forward gears so it would, I think, be less problematic in a normal five speed car.  You can play your CDs through the Naztech N3050 by tuning your radio to white noise and then setting the same frequency on the LCD display. It took a while to find the best frequency to use but once I did it worked well.

The big downside I found though was that with your phone that close to the radio there was, inevitably, interference. The only way round this is setting your phone to Airplane mode. The downside of this though is that you can't receive any calls so if this is one of your main reasons for buying it, you might want to bear that in mind.

I struggled a bit with the speakerphone as in almost every incoming call the caller couldn't hear me very clearly although I could hear them well. This was probably made worse by the fact that my lighter socket is very low down so I found I had to keep leaning down a bit to be heard.

All in all, I felt that the quality was good. It was very easy to assemble and the instructions were good.  There were a few little glitches but they were as much to do with the positioning of my lighter socket than any design inadequacies. I would certainly recommend it as an FM transmitted and a car charger, maybe less so for the handsfree capability. Before purchasing any piece of kit like this it is probably worth considering the layout of your car as this will impact on its functionality. That said, it has worked well overall and now, after several months of use, I have had no problems with it.