Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are fast become ‘must have’ functionality in modern cars, providing an interface from your smartphone while you’re driving – the technology is becoming available on bikes too, but the roll-out has been slow and buggy.
Carpuride is a company providing alternatives, stand-alone devices which provide the functionality of the latest tech for bikes which don’t have it standard, and the company set Australian Road Rider one of its 7-inch units to test out (there are also 5-inch units if you’d like something smaller).
I wasn’t expecting much, because third-party CarPlay units for cars have been crazy expensive and I wasn’t really thinking Carpuride (a company Id never heard of) would be able to produce something which does the job and is built for bike riding at a low price, but that’s exactly what they’ve done. You order the devices directly from Carpuride and this one is priced at $279.99 USD (about $415 Aussie).
I had the unit mounted and working on my FJR1300 in minutes, although I already had a RAM ball mount set-up… without that I couldn’t have mounted the Carpuride at all, for the supplied handlebar mount simply would not have worked with the shape of the bars on the FJR.
Power to the unit is via the bike – there are no batteries – so you either have to run the supplied cable to the battery (or, in my case, to a Healtech Thunderbox relay) or use the USB power cable (also included).
Then you need to bluetooth pair your phone to the device and that’s about it – as an iPhone user the unit now boots up when I start the bike and flips straight into CarPlay.
Other functionality includes a mSD card slot, which can play music and display photos and videos – I was hoping to use this to view my GoPro and drone footage that I shoot when I’m out on the road and touring, however the CarpuRide W702 wouldn’t display those photos and videos because of the format that they’re in.
The W702 is waterproof and reasonably well built. It’s not at the same quality level as an iPhone or a Garmin GPS, but it’s also an awful lot cheaper than those devices too. And I think it’s built to a standard that should last for many years. You can use any gloves with the W702 as well. You don’t have to have touch sensitive units, which makes a huge difference in being able to choose whatever gloves you want. Additional charging cables are available at low cost, which makes the W702 easy to transfer from bike to bike if you have more than one.
Check out the different Carpuride devices at carpuride.com and watch my video below.
