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My 2008 Prius doesn't have Bluetooth and I have to use a dongle. Its one of the biggest issues I have with the car. The dongle needs power, which is fine - I've got it plugged into a USB socket but everytime I start up the car I have to switch it on; otherwise I've got no audio. When I stop the car, the dongle has a small battery so my podcast continues playing if I don't pause it - I then miss part of it.

I rented a car a few years ago that had Bluetooth for the audio and it was wonderful. Stop the car and my music paused, start it and it got going again.

I test drove a few new cars recently and of course they all had Bluetooth, but the Dacia Sandero Stepway had wireless Android Auto. You set it up over Bluetooth but after that you no longer needed to plug the wire in to have Android Auto on the screen. Really impressed me, and being a Dacia was the cheapest car I looked at. The Toyota dealership claimed it didn't exist when I asked about getting that on the Yaris.




My 2014 Xterra has Bluetooth, but it's an old Bluetooth that works for calls and not music. I also had to get a dongle, since my phone lacks a headphone jack (another spectacular engineering decision).

You should get a better BT dongle though. Mine switches on when the power turns on.


If you can, I strongly recommend spending $300-500 on a receiver with CarPlay/Android Auto support. The install kits are so good they often look like they're stock installations. I even was able to replace my cigarette lighter with a USB port, so there are no unsightly cables sticking out of my dash or anything.




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