Cars and car tech

The good: The Alpine iDA-X001 is an innovative in-car device for those who want to take their iPods on the road. Its digital USB connection enables playback of compressed and lossless files, while its well-designed menu system is intuitive and easy to understand.

The bad: For a system that claims to deliver "the best in-vehicle iPod experience ever," we found the iDA-X001's jog wheel to be slower and less effective at navigating digital audio libraries than we would have liked.

The bottom line: The made-for-iPod Alpine iDA-X001 is a useful interface for bringing a digital-music library on the road. We like its stylish design and breadth of functions, although its user interface falls behind that of the iPod itself.

Read full review