Grom USB2P Android Interface Review

[toxo]

I went on a trip to France recently, and I wanted a way to get tunes & satnav from my phone into my stereo. It's very noisy in a soft top and you need to be able to hear the instructions clearly! My car has the standard 'facelift' Toyota stereo, and a dealer-fit CD changer, so no aux input. I had a few options - I could have binned off the stereo and fitted a cheap bluetooth stereo from Halfords, which probably would have cost less but would have been ugly and I doubt I would have got too great a stereo for my budget. There's also the faff of converting from double din to single din, facia kits that don't fit, etc etc. But having seen them mentioned on some other car forums, I decided to take a punt on the latest Grom OEM interface for Android & USB, the USB2 plus (USB2P-TOY). This bit of kit is a box that plugs in to your stock Toyota stereo in place of the CD changer and provides an interface to Android devices, USB memory sticks, Bluetooth hands free, etc.

Installation
The first thing I did was remove my CD changer. I had been using it but with a decent Android & USB interface I shouldn't need to anymore - my head unit still has a CD slot. The changer also took up a lot of space which is a rare commodity in a roadster! This freed up the CD changer port on the back of the HU. It also revealed the shockingly bad job the dealer had done of fitting the changer! A post facelift MR2 has a Toyota branded stereo made by Panasonic, which despite its age still uses the old (90s) Toyota CD changer plug. Grom's compatability list will tell you that the car uses the new style plug but they are incorrect. The TOY1 cable is required, not the TOY cable.

Next up I found a neat space underneath the ashtray that the Grom unit would fit in. It's not much larger than a pack of 20 fags but it has cables coming out of both ends which make it take up more room. I ordered mine with an AUX input and the Bluetooth hands free kit as well, so I had to stick a microphone near the driver's position and run the cable round behind the dash into the Bluetooth unit.

Firmware Update / Configure the Grom
After that I updated the Grom to the latest firmware which is a simple job of copying a file onto a memory stick (needs to be one with a light on that flashes when it's being used but most have this) and plugging it in. When that was done I copied on a file to tell Grom to use Android 4.4 USB streaming. Same deal, download the file from the website, put it on a memory stick and plug the memory stick into the Grom. Job done.

Input 1 - USB port
The huge number of features of this unit was immediately evident. I plugged a memory stick into the device and immediately was able to skip through the folders of songs. The audio quality is really good, a good MP3 is indistinguishable from the stock CD player. My only criticisms of this bit would be that it's not that fast to skip through a lot of folders at once, and you can't do shuffle across the entire memory stick, only over the current folder. However I think these are actually both restrictions of the stock head unit rather than the Grom device. If required I can plug my phone in to the USB port and it will charge it as well as opening Google Play Music up straight away, and stream the audio digitally over the USB cable.

Input 2 - Bluetooth
I paired my phone with the Grom device, which was painless. No mucking around, just hit Bluetooth, found the Grom, hit pair, hit OK. Whenever you play audio from a paired Bluetooth device it overrides whatever the Grom is doing, i.e. playing from USB. This works really well with satnav - you can be listening to music from a USB stick and when your phone wants to give you a direction, the Grom will pause the USB playback, switch input to Bluetooth, read the satnav instructions, then switch back to USB and unpause. Very smart. If you want to play music from the phone, it again overrides whatever else the Grom is playing. Going down this path does allow you to 'shuffle all songs' as it's the phone doing the playback and streaming it digitally to the Grom. If I have a call come in, it will pause playback and I can press skip forwards on the head unit to answer and skip back to reject. At any point I can also press 5 on the head unit and it switches the phone to voice instruction, so I can shout 'Phone Gary' or 'Play Bob Marley' and it will do what I ask. Calls seem clear even with the roof down and the caller can hear me just fine.

Input 3 - Aux port
Last but not least I also have the aux port kit, which gives me a 3rd input which is a headphone jack and a USB port which is just for charging. So, my passenger can plug their phone/ipad/tablet/whatever in without any pairing or mucking about, and the USB port can charge it, or charge a satnav, or an e-cigarette, whatever I like. Means I don't need a separate phone charger.

Useability
Changing inputs is simple too. When I first change the HU to CD changer the Grom says through the speakers 'USB'. If I press the button to skip tracks, it will say 'AUX'. To change inputs later, you just switch to FM and then back to CD changer, and it will read out the input again and allow you to skip.

All in all I think it's one of the cleverest and easiest to use bits of car electronics I've ever seen! And my car's interior still looks stock, apart from an unintrusive bluetooth mic on top of the steering column. It will work on any standard Toyota stereo with this CD changer plug on (which is most late 80s - early 00s) so when the time comes I can move it from the MR2 to my Supra and retain all the same functionality.

Well impressed.

[Pulse]

Any links for where to buy this?