FM Transmitter USB Charger

This guy... I had another FM transmitter, but it had issues with heat and would constantly power off so I bought this. My goal was to have a USB charging port as well as a 3.5 mm female plug so I could use my phone's 2 in 1 usb/headphone cable and only run one wire up to my phone mount. This product can handle that, however, I have a Droid Razr Maxx and the first time I plugged this baby in with USB connected and powered it up it started to smoke. Not a ton, but enough to wonder if it was going to burn my car to the ground while I was driving. No worries, though, I continued to use it and it hasn't ever smoked again. The phone has also never said it was charging again, but my last FM modulator couldn't charge my phone either, so I wasn't too worried. This guy only has 6 channels, another worry for me before using it. But fear not, this thing is like it's own radio station compared to any other FM Modulator I have ever used. It can cover up a weak radio station with no effort. This is why I gave it 4 stars.

I would like to meet whoever is going to charge triple A batteries in this thing, though. wtf? To me it's a waste of space, but whatever. It doesn't really hurt anything to have it. What if you come across a pack of 3 rechargeable aaa batteries, you know? The only two things that make this lose a star is the fact that it has a button for powering it on rather than a switch. You have to long-hold that button for like 3 seconds to power it on, then press it the number of times you want to get to your channel. The power plug only goes out 90 deg like you can see in the picture, so in my car I have to have the LED lights faced down and it barely plugs into my cig lighter. Sometimes I'll get it powered on and go to switch to channel 2 (a slightly cleaner channel, I have never tried anything past the second channel) and boom I wiggle it while pressing the button and it falls out of the cigarette lighter just enough to power down. A minor issue, but it would be worth 50 dollars if it had a power on/off switch and a switch to change channels so you didn't have to cycle to your channel on each power up. I paid $20, I see it's down to $10 today, so I would say it's a steal if it works in your auto.

Overall, I think I'm going to go fishing one more time and try to get one that handles all of my needs and works well. However, I plan to keep this guy around in hopes that it plugs into the next car I own, or maybe I'll keep it in the GF's car so I can still use it from time to time. I'm half tempted to grab another at $10 in hopes that I just had a bad solder on my USB plug, but I'm pretty sure the razr maxx just uses an ungodly amount of power even though it should be on the USB standard.

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