Lexus Ipod Adapter

Mr Pants! · January 21, 2010

Thought I would post up the Lexus IPod adapter I have had installed in my RX400h and give a bit of a review on it. I know a lot of peeps have this, but for those who don’t, perhaps this will help you decide if you want to get one or not.

I am no expert, but happy to answer any questions as best I can.

I was very lucky to have this installed for my Xmas present by my wife, she secretly had it added to the car when it was in for a service in December 2009. I said after Xmas I was going to get it installed, but she surprised me with it instead.

As I was going to get it installed, I know the price was £285 fitted, there are probably cheaper options out there, but I am not that bothered, this works well and I am happy.

So the Lexus IPod adapter...

As you can see in the image below you get a lovely Lexus display when you connect it to the car. When it is connected all the controls on the IPod are disabled, so you can not adjust volume, settings etc from the IPod. If you need to unplug it you just pull the plug, there is no need to do any disconnecting process like when you are connected to a PC.

The IPod stops and starts when the car is stopped and started, it only starts when selected by you, so if you are listening to FM, it stops. It also is charged by the car when the ignition is on.

The only evidence of the IPod adapter being installed is a discreet cable in the glove box, which is perfect as all the control for the IPod is done from the car system anyway.

I was advised by Lexus that these adapters work better on the full LCD SATNAV version of the stereos as they display the Playlists, I would tend to agree with that. As you can see below if this was the only display you had it would be quite hard to find a track you want, unless you have a good memory for numbers which I don’t! I will explain below.

The adapter is basically plugged into the CD port in the back of the stereo. I did not realise you do have the option for a CD changer in the boot as well as the 6 discs the head unit takes and when you press the Disc button twice, it flicks from the front changer to the boot changer. So they have basically tapped into the CD changer input. This means that all the controls for the IPod are CD based, i.e. if you select CD number 3 your IPod will play Playlist number 3. This is where a bit of an annoyance starts to emerge, but don’t worry it is outweighed by the fact you now have a working IPod adapter you can control from your steering wheel.

So, in ITunes I had to do some thinking as I had to use Playlists, which I have never bothered with in the past. So how did I want to group my Music in a sensible way so I could find my Music whilst on the move (yes, it still locks you out of the track list when you pull away, so you can’t rely on that). I grouped my music into chill out, Modern Pop and Jazz etc playlists, oh and The Prodigy got their own play list as I have 3 albums on there, so as you can see I named the playlist "The Prodigy".

So how do you select the playlists whilst trundling along in your car? There are a few ways and unfortunately you need to switch between both to get to all the lists, unless I have missed something from the manual.

Select Audio so your LCD is displaying the options as above, and you can tap the screen to select one of the six playlist you want, it displays the name of the playlist even when moving, so you now know you are in the list you want. As you can see though it only displays 6 buttons, so what if you want to get to playlist 7, 8, 9 etc. You then have to click on the main head unit and select “Disc” up or down to get out of that screen to the next, this will then take you on to another screen of 6 buttons, where your next 6 playlists are displayed.

Ok, so here is the first irritation, if I select playlist 3 and track 4, I am happily listening, pull up and park, switch off the engine and go to work. The IPod as expected stops and turns off. I turn on the engine later when going home and it’s still playing track 4 “Woh ho!”, but now in playlist 1 “Ehh!” By default playlist 1 appears to be all the tracks on the IPod in a row and it defaults back to that, which is annoying so when you reach the end of the album you were listening to, you will be taken off through all your tunes on the IPod. I believe you can set RPT in various ways that may resolve this, i.e. fix it to RPT the playlist, but I have not tried that.

After you are in your list you can then use the track up and down to select the track you want to listen to. Another slight annoyance is I have made some of my playlists a little too big and whilst you are on the move you have to click “next track” a lot of times to get to the track you wanted! So I am not sure if I want 20 playlists with 10 tunes each or 10 playlists with 20 tunes each. Will have to play with that and see.

Finally, another consideration is the quality of the music, I think ITunes defaults to 128 Kbps AAC and I don’t think at that level it sounded great in the high quality Lexus sound system, so I went over the top and redone all mine as 320 Kbps MP3. Definitely sounds better and I did not mind as I have loads of space on my IPod, but it is something you want to consider if you are particular about the quality of your sound.

So there you go, my probably too long review. Hope it helps.........