Full Review

8 December 2006 - So many FM transmitters only offer just that, the chance to transmit your tunes from your MP3 player to a nearby radio. Anydrive, available on merconnet.com has a different approach. It offers users the chance to sort their music on the device wiping out the need for a separate MP3 player altogether.

Small and compact, the Anydrive is slightly larger that a regular box of matches. The front is dominated by a large screen, while the standard play, pause, forward and backward buttons are found on the top of the device.

Playback is possible not just through a conventional minijack input for digital audio players but also a built-in SD card slot and a USB port that accepts flash storage and hard disk drives. The feature means that you can forget the device's MP3 playing abilities and simply use it as an FM transmitter instead.

Like the TuneBase FM from Belkin, the Anydrive 3 has memory presets for up to seven FM frequencies to save you having to manually scan for signals each time you move to a different area and lose the signal you were on.

Once tuned in, all that's left is to tune your car radio into that frequency. And here lies the rub; you've got to make sure that the signal you're trying to transmit to is free. Try and take over the Radio 2 signal, for instance, and you're going to struggle with lots of interference.

That said, when you do find a spare bit of signal on the band, you're in business and your favourite tunes will be piped out in your car for you to sing along to.

In our tests, quality of the Merconnet Anydrive 3 was very good and getting it to work was a case of press play on the MP3 player and then selecting the frequency on the radio and away you go.

VERDICT
As a device that will allow you to connect any music player to the transmitter to then have you music on the go, this ticks all the boxes.

Our only complaint was that a little more effort could have been put into its design.

Good, but not for the design conscious.