CarlinKit Wireless CarPlay

Ordered this on a Thursday, was delivered the following Monday. From China to Seattle! Amazon had it listed as a 1 month delivery! When I ordered, the supplier immediately emailed me further questions about my car, and asked for pictures from my car's screen. This made me feel more confident that they were going to send me the correct unit for my car (2016 BMW M235i xdrive F23).The seller also recommends installation be done by a shop or professional. But I had seen numerous competitor product videos showing how to install, so I got my wits together and braved the challenge. Note- the instructions that come with the unit are not good enough to prepare you for the nuances of taking your dash apart, and wiring the unit up to your head unit. You'll need to watch some YouTube videos that exist out there for like products.I installed the unit fairly easily. I emailed the seller with some questions as to settings, and they were quick on their replies- overnight. I'd say the most difficult part of the installation, is maneuvering the module and the new additional wiring harnesses back into the dash!It's now all back together, and working great! Jacky at Carlinke was great replying back to my few questions, and sent me a firmware update to bring the unit up to date.I've only had the product for a week now, but I'm extremely happy with it, and it's working well.I've not done many reviews, and was not furnished anything to do this review. I'm nicely surprised with the quality of the product, and mostly the customer service from the seller. Thank you Carlinke for bringing my car the coolness of Carplay!

READ THIS REVIEW!! This product is not good. I should do a video review to show how horribly inconsistent it is. I have it hooked up now and first, I don’t even know if they sent one for an iPhone or Android considering the “CarPlay” menu if I want to mirror tells me to connect an Android. In the instructions, it says I can connect wirelessly or USB to mirror my “iPhone” which it will not let me do on the product because it says to connect an Android.1. The product connection is very inconsistent. Sometimes it connects Bluetooth and sometimes you have to go into the iPhone and click “forget device” and reconnect to get CarPlay to work. Who wants to deal with that all the time?2. Sometimes you can’t connect to the CarPlay system and it’s stuck on the factory BMW system. It tells you in the instructions to push and hold the menu button (on the EVO which I have a CIC but they don't tell you that) which sometimes works and other times it does nothing.3. Sometimes when you are connected and put the car in reverse and the camera goes on, it won’t go back to CarPlay no matter how much you push the “menu” button on your car. The music still works though if you were playing something. You have to shut your car off and start it again to possibly get it to work.5. It’s so inconsistent that you never know what you are going to get. You cannot trust that it will work if you are on a road trip and need your maps.6. At first we could not even get the Bluetooth phone calls to work coming in but people could hear us and then it randomly worked. We changed nothing. It did the same with its normal connectivity so we don't know that we "fixed" anything because we changed nothing. It will leave you questioning the future possibility of it working.7. I am mechanically inclined so the install is not too bad but the wiring is a pain to deal with. The instructions are not good at all. I've watched videos from other places on how to install it as well. BimmerTech probably has a better product but we just didn't want to spend that much right now. Maybe we will go with that depending on what its capable of.So far this has been a waste of time and money. The only thing we benefit from is we can see our map on the screen. We have no video or mirroring capability. And we don’t know if it’s going to stay connected anyway so the map is pointless. Either someone needs to check and make sure you sent the right product and a video on how to operate the system or we want our money back. I am still waiting for a response from them as I only have a short time before I need to return.

Good:Functions exactly as hoped. Android Auto works flawlessly and wirelessly.Cannot comment on Carplay, don't have an iPhone.Shipping was extremely fast, ordered Saturday and delivered Tuesday.No interference with stock iDrive.Install in a 2 series was relatively easy w/minimal dis-assembly.Update: emailed seller, the aux issue was 100% me being an idiot. No aux cable needed to be run through the cabin. The reverse issue remains but is a minor annoyance and basically just masks the time for the unit to start and connect my phone to wireless android auto. Upgraded to five stars.PSA: if you're installing this unit in a car with the HK head unit, the trim piece below the radio controls comes off easily and opens the area under the head unit up a lot, would've made install much easier in my F22 2 series had I realized that earlier.Bad:Had to hide an aux cord running through the cabin, didn't expect that, not shown in the install videos and pretty disappointingMy car doesn't have a backup camera, every time I go into reverse it switches back to iDrive until I put the car back into drive, it's automatic so it's not terrible, but there's also no option to turn it off.Fitting it behind the HK head unit took a lot of trial and error.

We've really liked this product, and I was worried about not going for the BimmerTech (2x $$$) version. But this works very well. We had some connectivity issues wifi/wired with our previous phones. But we just upgraded to the iPhone 13 Pro's and they have been solid on CarPlay. Sometimes we need to select which iPhone to connect if both my wife and I are in the car. But typically it just selects the last person's phone that was connected. Works very well, and I'm not aware of any feature it lacks from the BimmerTech. We installed it on a 2016 BMW X5, with the 6 pin display connector. So nice to have carplay features with the 3G sim card about to make the connected drive software useless. Cheers!