[Upgrade] Westods Wireless Apple Carplay & Android Auto with 2.5K Dash Cam, 1080P Backup Camera, Portable 7" HD IPS Screen for Car, GPS Navigation, Bluetooth, AirPlay, MirrorCast, AUX/FM Transmitter

First off, this review is a little all over the place so if you’re looking for bullet points you should read another. But if you’re looking for more details that other reviews might not have, then you might wanna stick around. This radio is very easy to install, although I would recommend not using the entire sticky side of the mount as it is very strong and hard to remove once placed, so take your time during placement. It takes a couple of seconds to boot up and connect to your phone, but once it does it’ll generally switch on CarPlay automatically. The cameras are extremely clear and high quality, and the backup lines are easy to set up. When you contact them for the boot logo, they respond within 24 hours but usually much sooner than that, and they have excellent customer service. CarPlay is great, it’s not as smooth as the latest iPhone screen refresh rate may offer, but it gets the job done and still looks nice with a crystal clear, glossy screen (especially for the price, most other devices like this are much more expensive and don’t offer these front and rear cameras at a comparable price for this overall quality). The front camera on mine is blocked since I have it in a little nook where the original screen was/is on my 2011 Acura MDX. The front camera is on the unit itself, but you can move the angle of it all around slightly to get a good view of the road in case of an accident. The menu is easy to navigate, and you’re still able to use your original car sound system/bluetooth. It also offers an AUX chord connection so if your car doesn’t have Bluetooth, you will have Bluetooth after this! And if you decide not to use either of those options, CarPlay will still work if you plug your phone in directly to your car as well, at least in my experience, I know this may differ from car to car. I highly recommend this as a CarPlay/camera system, and the wiring is easy to hide and tuck in as well! I will say what effort you put into setting up the back up camera is what you’ll get out of it. For anyone who has made it this far, the wire you need for the backup camera to activate when you put your car in reverse needs to be on the “live” wire of the backup light. You can figure this out by using a voltmeter and putting the red positive point on a wire and the black negative on the metal of your car and see if you get a reading. I’d reccomend looking this up on YouTube so you can see rather just read, although the process is simple. I’d also reccomend testing your voltmeter on your car battery first as a check to see if your voltmeter is working. Once you find the correct wire, you can either bond the two together. Or, if you do it right, you can even just tuck it in with the bulb into where it clips in if possible, which is what I did. That took a couple of attempts but I did manage to get it working, and it’s great! Overall I’d rate this 9/10, the only things I could see being improved (which probably are on a more expensive version) are the frame-rate and responsiveness increasing so that everything runs smoother and quicker. Aside from that, this radio is more than worth it if you want CarPlay and want it more affordable than not!

SUMMARY:The Westwods Portable Wireless CarPlay Car Stereo has been a great addition to my Cayenne on my 3,000 mile round trip vacation in Colorado. I was able to install it in my vehicle and perform a first-time connection to my iPhone with very few issues. Support through “CarStereo Support” on Facebook Messenger has been great and relatively quick considering the time zone difference. The screen looks great, is bright enough on sunny days, and dims nicely at night. The CarPlay interface works as well as any other add-on CarPlay device I’ve used. The DVR function is a nice-to-have feature for me, but hopefully I’ll never be in a situation where I need it. I would recommend this CarPlay device to anyone who wants to add a map display to their car and has a dashboard large enough to accommodate a 9.3-inch screen.DETAILS:I have a 2008 Porsche Cayenne GTS with the original PCM 2.1 sound system and an aftermarket MOST Bluetooth adapter. I wanted a screen larger than my iPhone’s for displaying maps while on the road. I have factory 9.x diagonal display that I like in my 2015 BMW, so I searched for CarPlay units in that size range. The Westwods Portable Wireless CarPlay Car Stereo (referred to as “the Unit” in this review) seemed to fit the bill so I took a chance on the 4.1 review rating and bought one.For this installation, I mounted the Unit to the large speaker/vent cover on top of the Cayenne dash with M4 screws and nuts. This location gets a small amount of airflow from the AC so hopefully that will help extend the life of the Unit. I already have a factory backup camera, so I did not use the included rear view camera. Power is routed from one of the ports under the passenger side of the dash. I used the suction cup mount temporarily to check out the Unit, but it didn’t keep the Unit very secure. I would not recommend using the suction cup mount as a long-term mounting solution.The phone setup (CarPlay in my case) and Bluetooth setup were straightforward. Sound is routed from my phone through my MOST Bluetooth adapter to the factory car stereo.I had some minor problems finding and understanding a few of the Unit’s menu settings, but the folks at CarStereo Support were able to help me solve them all. They also sent me a great looking logo file to install in my Unit.There are a couple of areas of improvement that could be incorporated into the next version of this unit:1) Add a separate wire to sense when the car is turned off so that the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are turned off, but the DVR is still powered on. It can be annoying to have your phone switch to the Unit’s Wi-Fi or Bluetooth when you are in the vicinity of the car.2) Use a 90-degree USB-C connector on the power cord. This small change would greatly tidy up the installation on the dash.3) [Sorry, a little technical here] The current IPS screen is adequate for most conditions, but many cars are now using a transflective backlight on the LCD screen for knockout sunlight readability. This type of backlight makes the screen brighter as more sunlight hits it. Plus, it saves power, resulting in a cooler, more reliable unit. I’d pay $20 more for a version of this Unit with a transflective screen.All in all, I would recommend the Westwods Portable Wireless CarPlay Car Stereo to anyone who wants to add a CarPlay or Android Auto map display to their car and has a dashboard large enough to accommodate a 9.3-inch screen.I will update this review in the future if my Unit develops any problems or fails as described in the one-star reviews.