

If you want to keep your eyes on the road, you can talk to your Car Thing, too, by saying “Hey Spotify” followed by standard commands like play, stop, and skip. The screen isn’t as buttery smooth as we’ve come to expect from modern smartphones, but it’s responsive enough for a device you really shouldn’t stare at for too long.

It’s as easy to use as the standard Spotify car interface, but some of the hardware customizations we’ll get into below take that up a notch. The Car Thing has a custom version of the Spotify app interface that’s bright, clean, and easy to read. The focus is on the touchscreen, though, which will be readily familiar to Spotify users despite being built for the Car Thing specifically. The Spotify Car Thing is about the same size as your average phone mount. That said, it looks very nice when placed just right. Having a variety of mounting options is appreciated, but none of them feels completely sturdy: Though most were stable enough to get by, the device wobbled a bit no matter how I mounted it. The mount, a small magnetic puck, can either slot into an air conditioning vent or stick onto a flat spot on the dash with an adhesive strip. The Car Thing mounts to your car’s dash or vent and pulls power via a 12V USB Type-A car adapter (or you can use your own USB car adapter and a USB-C-to-A cable, so long as they draw enough juice). In addition to the 3.97-inch, 480 x 800 touchscreen, you can also use voice controls and/or a more conventional set of buttons and a front-mounted dial. Plain and simple.Īt 4.5-inches wide by 2.5-inches tall and weighing 3.2 ounces, it feels downright tiny. If you don’t already use Spotify on a daily basis, you don’t need one. That alone makes it a niche car audio solution. There’s no internal storage or user interface that would allow you to download other apps.

It is not, however, a replacement for your car radio: The Car Thing works with Spotify and Spotify alone. The thin screen mounts to your dashboard, vent, or car’s CD player slot, offering a large touchscreen to pick streaming music in your car. The charcoal-colored box, matte finish, and large screen give the device a more premium look than the $90 price tag would suggest. The Spotify Car Thing is a thin, light heads-up display that most closely resembles a dedicated GPS. Check Price What is the Spotify Car Thing?
