I have been looking for a ipod integration solution and decided to visit Bestbuy I had the isimple gateway installed for $200, painless install took about and hour, very easy to operate. I highly recomend this solution if you are tired of making cd's!

 

Installed for $200 on top of the price of the unit?

 

question is do you get touch screen integration and stereo CD quality like Vaistech VML

 

I work at Best Buy so I was able to get Isimple for a discounted price on my GS.

The Isimple is a pretty good alternative if you don't want to spend a ton of $$$ just so you can listen to your ipod. The quality of sound is pretty close to CD quality and it does have all the on screen touch integration built in so you can actually control the ipod through your screen. There's also an input if you want to put in an aux cable for other devices.

The Isimple user interface isn't as nice as the other units like the Vaistech but I really wanted something just to play my ipod through my Lexus with clear quality. Didn't want to spend $500 just so I can do that.

 

so.. it doesn't retain steering wheel controls?

 

Steering wheel controls work you can skip tracks and adjust volume.

 

$200 + tax includes installation

 

that sounds pretty cool!

does it charge your iphone too?

 

nice i am on my way to best buy this weekend thanks man

 

I have one for my car, but it has a warm up delay where it locks up the radio for about a minute.... controls do work in both pandora and music player for iPhone. Install was very simple if you know how to take the radio interface off.

 

Is there a specific one for our cars or is it universal?? Can come one put up a pic of the actual device please? Thanks

 

ISIM74 is the model number

 

Thanks i appreciate it

 

omg... thank you thank you!! i look online that one guy with a ES330 has a really poor review on that product... i think i might bite the bullet and take the risk...any chance they will mess up my car? my car is a 2007 GS450h with ML everything, they say as long as u have SAT i am good to go, it say $199 for just the products itself doesn't the installation charge extra? Please advice.

 

I've had pretty good luck with mine - bought used through ebay for $99 and installed myself. At one time I tucked the box away behind the ashtray area. But now I have it inside the glovebox (found out recently that there was a tiny door that can be popped out to fish through cables.

The only thing that I had major issues with is the box loses connectivity with radio/hvac if the car battery goes dead. The Gateway unit seems to go into an unstable state at that point and I lose radio/hvac connectivity. If that happens, I just open up the box and perform a hard reset. Since my unit is relatively old, it is possible that they fixed this in their later revisions.

Also be careful on which hardware version you buy as the latest iOS software may not allow proper operation with this box. Whatever you buy from retail stores should have support - mine needs a $20~$30 upgrade to undo whatever Apple did with the later iOS version code. Check the box to make sure iOS 4/5 is supported (if using iPhone/iPod Touch). Nanos and older iPods do not seem to be affected by this issue.