If sticking your tablet or smartphone into your car isn’t enough, how about slotting this into your dash? The Parrot Asteroid Smart is more than just a sat nav in your dash, heck this is a music centre, phone, App Store and a whole lot more. Inside there’s voice recognition, Bluetooth and yes, it’ll tell you how to get to places too.
There’s a helpful video below showing you how it all works in true “looks a bit like the LloydsTSB advert” stylee.
The Asteroid Android has a special App Store called Asteroid Market which has a selection of apps which are ideal for your road warrior travels. Internet radio apps, driver assistance and the likes. It’ll connect to the web via your smartphone, dongle or MiFi access point.
But would you really want one of these? Is there a point? Sure, it’d look nice, but is it worth the money and the dashboard space? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Meanwhile, I’ve had a quick look around and you can get the Parrot Asteroid Mini for around £249.95 which sort-of sticks on top of your existing dash or the one we’re discussing here, the Parrot Asteroid Smart which slots into your dashboard for £479.99.
Personally I’d prefer the DIY Nexus 7 job 🙂
You have seen #ProjectN7 right? There’s definately a point, and Its DEFINATELY worth it. Best move I ever made having android in the car. I just knew I could do it cheaper 😉
Whats #ProjectN7 i am interested, particularly if it’s cheaper
Click on the DIY Nexus link above
This: http://www.coolsmartphone.com/2013/01/25/take-one-nexus-7-a-car-dashboard-and-a-whole-lot-of-diy-skills-and-what-do-you-get-projectn7-thats-what/
Essentially, Ross (@mrbridger:disqus on Disqus, @mr_bridger on Twitter) ripped his dashboard apart and rebuilt it, installing a Nexus 7 with a KITT theme and various functions along the way. It’s awesome!
Hehe. What He said 😉
wondering how they can justify the price tag, or am I missing something, since I could get a Nexus7 and plonk it on top my dashboard?
With the tablet route you still need a seprate car hifi – the parrot is all on one unit and is a direct replacement just whip out your old one and put it in
It’s not worth it at that price, no way.
I agree – seems much too expensive at just shy of £500, although Parrot stuff is always pretty good, if a little pricey. You’re still going to spend a fair amount on a Nexus 7, and then have to sod around with it for days to get it working right, so if you weigh that up, maybe £500 isn’t so bad.
I’ll bet you that a cheap Chinese Android-based double-DIN isn’t far off, and will be available for £200ish or less pretty soon, if not already. If you’re going DIY anyway, maybe a double DIN chassis with screen paired with a Raspberry Pi would be better (and cheaper) all round. In fact, I’ve been considering this for a while in one of my cars, so I might well post what I do later.
Looks pretty good, I prefer the N7 in-dash build though. Thing is, that looks extremely time consuming 🙁 In-car Android is an obvious thing to happen, some car makers have some sort of smart device built in now, so why not have an aftermarket version?
Nice idea, but for £250-ish I’d get an N4 and a car kit, for £500 I’d get a Note II and a car kit, and get change!
Android in car for £500, yes please. Especially for spotify offline playlists and a google powered navigator.
The killer feature for this high priced gizmo is the video control.
Being able to send a video to a backseat display is awesome.
But for $600 USD I would also like a backup cam included.
(I am curious as to the version of android this is based on, as the other parrot products looked to be cupcake-based…way old.)