I had a problem with my Toyota Highlander: The built-in bluetooth system was awful. Every time I tried to use it as a hands-free system the people on the other end complained about how they couldn’t hear me or that it was so noisy or distorted they couldn’t understand what I was saying. Surprisingly, a call to Toyota revealed that there was no upgrade path at all, no better microphone I could have installed, nothing. Tough luck.
Rather than be defeated, unable to have the safety of a hands-free system I went to the local car audio store, First off, let me explain how it works. There’s a display unit that you hardwire into the car’s audio system and it takes over as needed when there’s something you need to hear, whether it’s an audio system prompt, a phone call or music. Once installed, that part just works like magic. Installing it, as you might expect, involves getting into the dashboard and in my case, after considering a variety of different mounting options and worrying about permanently damaging the dashboard, we replaced one of my cigarette lighters with the unit (Car Toys fabricated a custom mount for this purpose, which works great). Quite elegant, actually.
In addition, the system uses a small remote control device that can be mounted just about anywhere, including on your steering wheel, though I expect that’d be a bit tricky in practice. I mounted mine next to the gear shift, easily accessible for both the driver and passenger.
The 9200 display is on a swivel mount so it too can be angled for easy viewing by either the driver or a passenger. That also slips off if you want to hand it to someone, though it’s small enough it can easily get lost so be careful, especially if you have a messy car.
Here’s how we ended up installing the display screen on the dash:
The system works via Bluetooth so you initially need to pair it with your phone, but it then supports A2DP, which means that you can not only use the MKi9200 for phone calls but also for listening to music from your mobile device. With a smart phone this means you now have Pandora and other Internet-based music services, as well as support for apps like the Clear Channel’s I Heart Radio app. Very slick.
You can also plug in an iPod, which I have done: an 80GB iPod Classic is tucked in my glove compartment and absolutely jammed full of music.
Therein reveals one of the greatest frustrations with the MKi9200: it doesn’t “remember” iPod settings. If I have it set to be on shuffle mode, by track, for a specific genre of music, every so often it resets to “play all, shuffle = off” and I have to again navigate through the menus to set up my preferred music access. Doesn’t seem like rocket science to have a device that remembers its settings, but this behavior is something that’s occurred repeatedly during the months we’ve used it, and even the latest major software update hasn’t fixed it.
Just as annoying, the Parrot MKi9200 also has a bad habit of failing to match CD covers with the music it’s actually playing from the iPod, as demonstrated in the following three pics:
What’s most frustrating is that one of the things I was most enthused about with the 9200 was that it would show CD covers as we listened to music off the iPod. I listen to a lot of music and the fact that about 20% of the time it’s showing the wrong cover? Crazy annoying. Does it impair the functionality of the device? Not really.
The device has a lot of other features and capabilities, but I only use the hands free phone system and the iPod connectivity. If you have other devices, music on an SD Card, a USB-based music gadget, or other ways that you would use the system, you might find your experience quite different.
I have very mixed feelings about the Parrot MKi9200. It’s a great hands-free bluetooth system that lets me make calls any time I’m in the car, even with lots of road noise (it has noise-cancellation circuitry that mask it from the listener), and even announces incoming calls. Very cool. It also is a nice way to let me access the zillion tracks I have on my iPod, letting me avoid AM/FM entirely and skip fiddling with CDs. But with its forgetfulness and inability to properly match tracks with CD covers, it’s also a source of ongoing annoyance.
The unit itself is $249.00 at the Parrot Online Store, and Car Toys told me the install was about $200 (though it was billed to Parrot, which was nice).
It’s top of the line. Without the seamless experience I expect from something that expensive.
1 thought on “Review: Parrot MKi9200 Bluetooth Car Kit”
Live in Naples Fl would like a system installed in my car. Do you have someone local who can do it?