Android Auto

Adding Android Auto and CarPlay to any car is getting easier, cheaper, and better

Ben Schoon | Mar 12 2024 - 2:05 pm PT

Android Auto and CarPlay are super useful features of newer vehicles, but it’s historically been a big hassle to install updated infotainment systems in older vehicles. But, over the past couple of years, it’s gotten way easier to do this, and now both the quality and price are improving too.

Back in 2022, I bought a GPS-style head unit for my wife’s car to add Android Auto since her Elantra had just barely missed the timing for when that became a “standard” feature. At the time, I was reasonably happy with the unit which required no tools for installation and cost around $200. It got the job done and, back then, it was also a relatively new idea.

Over the past year, though, that unit didn’t age particularly well. The screen was never all that bright and sharp, which only looked worse after a year in the sun. The suction cup was also starting to fail, but the final straw was her upgrade to the Pixel 8, with the head unit requiring a full factory reset (including digging up the original paperwork to find the passcode to reset it) just to let me pair her phone, only for it to struggle to stay connected in the weeks to follow.

So I went back to Amazon to see if options had gotten any better, and oh boy, they’ve gotten way better.

Searching around for an Android Auto or Apple CarPlay screen (they usually run both) for your car now brings up way more results, and there’s a huge variety of designs and form factors out there.

There are countless options with typical rectangular displays, but you can also opt for big screens, or little widescreens. There are even options that sit in your rearview mirror nowadays, and some even have built-in dashcams!

Ultimately, my wife and I settled on a 6.86-inch, widescreen Android Auto screen from “LAMTTO.” Notably, that brand seems to be putting out a lot of these units in different shapes and sizes.

The unit is adorably small, but totally usable with wireless Android Auto. The screen triggers Android Auto to show Google Maps on one side and a widget for music on the other, with a left-side mounted taskbar for switching apps and accessing the app drawer.

This new device has a much better display that’s brighter and has faster touch response too. It’s been a huge upgrade. More importantly, it’s also been super stable in terms of getting and staying connected to her Pixel 8 when she gets in the car. As for the initial setup, it took just a few minutes to pull out the mount, put it up on her dashboard, and clean up the power and audio cables a little bit. The software on the device was also way easier to use than the other handful of versions of this product I’ve tried in the past.

The “regular” price of the unit is $99.99, but when we picked it up, it had a $20 coupon available, and right now, it’s discounted even further to $69.99.

As mentioned, though, this is just one example of many. There are tons of these Android Auto/CarPlay screens on the market, and the average one appears to have gotten much better and much cheaper compared to where this form factor was even a year ago.

Are you using one of these displays? Let us know in the comments below how it’s working for you!