Carpuride CarPlay Review – 9″ Wireless CarPlay Screen that Works!

Over the last couple of years, I’ve definitely had some issues with connectivity. There are times I get in the car and it just doesn’t seem to connect, and so I have to re-pair my phone.

This is very intermittent, but it is a bit of a pain from time to time.

So when CARPURIDE reached out and said, “Hey, we’ve got a unit we think that you should try and tell us what you think,” they sent this to me. 

This is the 9-inch version, which I’ve received complimentary for my opinions.

First impressions

 When the box arrived, I thought hey, that’s a good-looking box. You know, sometimes the design on them isn’t so good-looking. 

Took it out of the box and thought, “Holy smokes, this thing is massive!” 

This is a 9-inch screen, which is really quite awesome. But that does add a little bit of bulk around it, in terms of its depth, to cater to such a big screen.

I don’t think this will be a problem for most people. 

Overall, it felt very much like any of the other wireless CarPlay Android units you can get for your car, in that it has a USB, auxiliary, power, a memory card slot, and a couple of other bits, like a microphone and a built-in speaker.

Getting it installed

My biggest challenge with this was actually getting it installed in the car. 

Because I have a very high dash, even the Carlinkit took up quite a bit of space, and it took me a long time to figure out where to put it.

As you’ll see in the photos, I ended up center mounting it under my rear vision mirror, and also just securing it with a couple of cable ties to the rear vision mirror, in the event that the sticky window mount comes loose, and the unit drops down. I really don’t want it to smash the factory head unit that I have in the dashboard.

The CARPURIDE was not going to fit on my dash, although I think it will fit on a lot of people’s dashboards. 

So, what I have done is I’ve actually put it into my CD slot, with a CD slot rack mount which I got from Aliexpress for cheap.

It sits nicely between my existing touchpad console for the car, and also my utility buttons for controlling other parts of the car, as you’ll see in the photos. 

I already have a lot of wires in my car. 

I have an Echo Auto, with Alexa. I had the existing Carlinkit on the window still. I have an iDrive throttle controller, which has wires as well. I have, obviously, a couple of charging cables for my iPhone, and anyone else’s iPhones if they want to sit in the car with me. 

So to now add in another device with more wires was a little bit…well, it left me feeling a bit unenthused. I disconnected all the wires from the Carlinkit, plugged in the CARPURIDE, and then good things started to happen.

Connecting the CARPURIDE to my system

The installation of the CARPURIDE is no more complicated than any other wireless console. It has a 12-volt plug and an auxiliary 3.5-millimeter cable that comes with it.

This is pretty much all you’re gonna need for what you need to do.

Something that I had working intermittently on my previous unit was that, while I had the power plugged in, and the auxiliary audio cable also plugged in, if I switched my car stereo to Bluetooth, then I could also do certain things through just the Bluetooth of the phone to the car. 

This is a little more complicated, but let me explain. 

In my car, obviously, I have different modes that you can switch through for your audio player, and your car will probably have the same if it’s been built in the last 10 or 15 years. You can switch between FM, AM, Bluetooth if it’s available, and auxiliary audio inputs, etc.

Because my phone was connecting to the car via Bluetooth, and the Carlinkit and the CARPURIDE were plugged in via the 3.5-millimeter jack plug, I had the option of actually using both. 

The reason for this is, I understand, that because the CarPlay software is really on your phone and these display tablets are really just a thin client that allows CarPlay to be played on them because CarPlay was really happening on my phone because it was connected via Bluetooth to the car if I switched between the audio input of auxiliary to Bluetooth, I could still use the CARPURIDE to control everything I needed to, volume, press play, switch apps, but via the phone’s connectivity and Bluetooth to the car meant I didn’t actually need the auxiliary plug. 

This meant I only needed one power plug and wire to the CARPURIDE to make it run. And then once my phone connected to the car and the CARPURIDE, I was able to operate the rest of it completely wirelessly. NOTE: You can’t use your steering wheel controls to control things. 

Bottom line, I can get in the car with my phone in my pocket, turn the car on, the CARPURIDE will connect, the phone will connect to the car’s Bluetooth, and I can then carry on as normal.

So, why after saying so many nice things about the Carlinkit am I going to keep the CARPURIDE? 

This falls into a few smaller topics. 

1: The first is connectivity. The Carlinkit worked. It connected most of the time, but there were times when it just didn’t connect. And then I would have to re-pair my phone to the device. And that was not only frustrating, but because it kept happening and I couldn’t seem to resolve the issue, no matter what I tried, I continued to persevere with it. 

With the CARPURIDE, since installing it and having used it daily for the last three weeks on long haul trips of up to 500 kilometers a day, right down to just a daily commute to the office, when the car turns on, it turns on and it connects every time, no problem. There are some quirks, which I’ll mention in a minute.

So, connectivity is really first and foremost where CARPURIDE has won me over. 

2: The second reason that the CARPURIDE will stay in my car is the screen size. Earlier, I said it was massive. And at 9 inches, it really is quite a large tablet. But there are a few benefits to this. 

2.1: The first is, with smaller screen size, like my previous unit, there were times I was hitting buttons, but because the buttons were so much smaller, my accuracy was off, because I was trying to drive, obviously. 

And so I had to sometimes repeatedly press the buttons. And also, sometimes the buttons weren’t very responsive, so I kind of had to apply some force, which you don’t wanna be doing to something that’s just attached to your windscreen on a suction mount.

With the CARPURIDE, that extra space allows me to very clearly, quickly, and easily hit the buttons on the screen to do what I need to do for the first time, and the sensitivity to the touch is really good. The sensitivity may not be any better than the other model I have, but just because it is larger, there’s more potential for me to hit the right pixels on the screen to make it do what I want it to do.

2.2 The fact that this unit starts up every time, connects to my phone correctly every time, and just works, has now removed lots of frustrations that I had when I would get in the car to do a road trip or a trip somewhere, and try to pull up maps, but have to wait for the startup time, and then sometimes the connectivity didn’t connect, and so I would have to reconnect. 

All those frustrations are now gone. It’s not to say that the updated models of the Carlinkit aren’t still great. And if you’ve only got room for 7-inch, it was a unit that has served me probably close to two years. And despite the connectivity, it’s certainly been so worth having.

2.3 With the CARPURIDE, I have a large screen that may not be where I want it, in the center of the console, but it’s so large that with a click glance I also get to see what I need to see. And as I’ve just mentioned, interacting with the unit is easy because the buttons are big. And so everything just works better.

My one complaint about the CARPURIDE

Well, if I was to have one, the main one, maybe I could just throw in a couple of little ones too.

If they can make it a bit thinner, that would be great. I’m not sure that the microphone is better on this. 

The microphone on the Carlinkit was a really good microphone, always picking me up. The CARPURIDE is good and seems to pick me up, so I’m not really sure if it’s just connectivity issues, where Siri kinda looks to be listening and then just fades away. 

But, again, this isn’t a major, I just need to talk a little louder. 

A high-resolution screen would be nice, but I’m sure that that would just be more expensive, and probably even heavier. So, of course, that would be nice, but not necessary.

So, the one main complaint that I have, and this probably isn’t CARPURIDE’s fault. 

As I explained earlier, what I do know is to connect the CARPURIDE to my phone automatically. And then the phone connects to the car, and then I have Bluetooth connectivity. Now, this works fantastically for music. But for some reason, I haven’t got the other voice commands working.

So, if I speak to Siri, she comes out of the speakers in the CARPURIDE, not through the car speakers.

It’s not a major problem for me, because actually, it’s really music that I’m most want to listen to through my stereo. 

But it would be nice if I could figure out how to also get those voice commands coming through. I think because of the way I’ve connected everything to the car is probably the reason that this little quirk is happening. So I’m not sure I can blame CARPURIDE for that. 

If I was to plug in the 3.5-millimeter jack plug, then everything would work fine, because it would all be going through the car stereo via the aux direct connection.

It’s probably worth noting that this obviously can also support Auto Link. 

It has an FM transmitter built into it, USB options, and an SD card slot. 

You can turn the display off, you can change the brightness, night/day. 

The unit will also auto-dim in dark light which is awesome, not just when your CarPlay on your phone dims, of course, because that’s what’s powering the software. 

And you’ve got Android Auto and CarPlay built in.

So, in conclusion

I would say that the CARPURIDE has definitely won me over. 

I was a bit overwhelmed by the size when I opened it, but now that I’ve found where in the car it sits, I’m really happy with it.

If you’re concerned with a high dash and very limited dashboard real estate, then you can also look at the smaller models that they offer. 

But I will definitely be keeping this in the car, and the previous model will probably be a gift to someone, in the hope that it operates or connects to their phone a little more consistently than mine. 

Still a good unit, but the CARPURIDE has definitely won me over.

Any questions at all, please ask in the comments below. 

Many of the common questions I get are:

Can you connect to this wirelessly? 

Yes. Can you then connect it to your car wirelessly? Yes, as I’ve explained how I do it above, which should work for most people. I have an iPhone. So if you have one of those, then that’s good.

And that’s it. Drive safe, stay safe. And we’ll talk to you soon.

This post was last updated on 2025-01-02 / Some images from Amazon Product API & some links may be affiliate links which may earn us a commission from purchases.