Kensington LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit Review

The Kensington LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit allows you to connect your phone to your car stereo. It lets you play music stored on the phone through the car's speaker system and also make hands-free calls.

Design and Build

The LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit is roughly the same size as a standard car power adapter. Unlike other adapters, though, it has a Bluetooth pairing button, an on/off switch and a USB port. Not to mention the built-in microphone and the attached 3.5mm audio cable.

A small remote control that attaches to your steering wheel helps keep the adapter at a respectable size. There are four buttons on the remote: a phone, skip forward, skip back, and play/pause.

Hitting the phone button allows a user to answer/disconnect a call, and the other three will allow you to ignore calls, use call waiting and transfer calls back to the headset, along with performing their music functions.

Quality and Use

The car kit was extremely easy to use. Plug in the adapter and hit the pairing button; the device paired almost immediately with my LG Chocolate cell. Then, plug in the 3.5mm cable into your stereo and you are ready to go.

What? You don't have a stereo jack, or as Kensington called it, a direct auxiliary port connection, in your car? Neither do I. I have access to a 2001 Chevy Tracker, a 2000 Nissan Maxima and 2004 Chevy truck at my home and not one of them had a jack/port. So I used a slim portable stereo to test the unit in my own car until I could find a car with a jack/port.

My second issue is that Kensington calls this a car kit and mentions a USB port that can be used to charge your phone. But the kit comes with no USB cable; you have to purchase it separately.

Other than the two complaints above, I had no other problems with the LiquidAUX car kit. The Bluetooth worked great. Everyone I talked to while using the hands-free calling had no problems hearing me, and no one sounded choppy or got cut off on the receiving end either.

The music function worked well, I pushed the play/pause button and the play list on my Chocolate popped up immediately. I could then skip forward/backward and hit the play button again to start the music.

It did take me a couple of calls to remember what each button on the remote control did as far as call waiting, ignoring calls, etc. but I picked it up relatively quickly.

Conclusion

Kensington has created another interesting and fairly functional Bluetooth device. The LiquidAUX car kit worked exactly as advertised and the idea of using your car speakers to talk to people is great.

But, I don't understand the idea behind not including a charging cable in a $100 "car kit". And while the direct auxiliary port is a good idea in theory, I couldn't find a "port"/stereo jack in a car that wasn't a new model or had a better than average stereo system. Better check your vehicle before purchasing this kit.

Pros:

• Bluetooth connection
• Simple to use, no software
• Hands-free calling

Cons:

• No phone charging cable
• Stereo jack NOT common in most vehicles
• Sort of Expensive

Pricing and Availability

The Kensington LiquidAUX Bluetooth Car Kit is priced at $99.99 and can be pre-ordered on the Kensington website.