3 ways to add Bluetooth to any car

Bluetooth is now a standard feature in almost every modern car, but with older models, that's not always the case. Here are the three best ways to add bluetooth to any car short of buying a brand new head unit. The easiest and most common way to add Blue Tooth to a vehicle's radio is by using a Blue Tooth receiver. Air your phone to the Blue Tooth receiver and any audio you stream from your phone will be sent to the receiver which then plugs into the three point five millimeter input jack. Or the auxiliary inn in your vehicle. This is typically found around the center control or sometimes inside the center console. Switch the audio source on the radio to aux in and you should hear your music. Because every car is different Blue Tooth receivers come in a few different configurations. Some are 12 volt or USB powered and others are battery operated. If you have an auxiliary import that's near the 12 volt socket or USB port it's best to go with the former. If not, the cords may not reach and you'll need a three point five millimeter extension cord or a battery operated Blue Tooth receiver which you will also need to keep charged. If your car or radio doesn't have an auxiliary input, you'll be better off with an FM transmitter. Effectively, the FM transmitters of today are also bluetooth receivers, but instead of sending the audio to the stereo through an auxiliary cable, it broadcasts it through an open FM radio frequency. You then tune your stereo's FM tuner to the correct frequency, and you should hear the music being streamed from your phone. A big boon for the FM transmitter is the lack of wires. But depending on which one you buy, you might also suffer the occasional audio dropout or static. If you don't mind not being able to stream your music through your car's stereo and you just want to make hands free calls, you can opt for a dedicated Bluetooth speaker phone. However, in a lot of cases, these are more expensive than the other two options. They clip to the sun visor above the driver and pair to your phone like any other bluetooth speaker. When you answer a call, both the audio and microphone input are handled by the visor mounted speaker phone. For more tips and tricks and other how-tos, be sure to check out CNET.com/howto.