CARabc Wireless CarPlay for Entune 2.0 - Gen 3 Tacoma Review

As I am nearing a full year of use on my CARabc unit I thought I would share my opinions on this unit for anyone else who is curious about this option.

Goals:
- OEM look and ease of reverting in case I ever wanted to return to bone stock;
- Apple Car Play for ease of access to maps and music; and
- Retaining OEM mic and wireless access.

I was looking for a less expensive and non-intrusive option than swapping the OEM head unit out as I had never used a CarPlay unit before and wanted to be sure I would actually enjoy it. Other units I read require installing their own mic as they don't utilize the OEM mic. I am also always trying to keep things pretty stock looking so the likely contender would be replacing my current head unit with the OEM Tacoma Entune unit with CarPlay. Viewed this purchase as a test really, but here I am nearly a year later going strong.

CarPlay (or Android Auto I would assume would apply here too--I have never tried it) is a life changer. Lightyears better than Entune. This unit being wireless is great as I can still use navigation and music when leaving my phone in my front pocket (back pocket phone use is a no-go as it interferes GPS). Perfect for short trips when I don’t want to pull my phone out to simply navigate or play music. For extended trips I plug my phone in to charge anyways, but having the navigation on the bigger center screen with turn-by-turn directions displayed on my phone is awesome. Safe to say my CarPlay experiment was a success—call me an Apple shill, but they made a great product.

As noted below, the huge two issues is the ignition delay and the resolution. Essentially at start up you have to wait a few seconds before shifting into drive or reverse or else the system won’t boot into the CARabc system. I am sure there is a great explanation for this as it seems the unit taps into the reverse camera upload path. I would prefer not to wait for the system to boot before shifting into gear but for ~$160 I can’t complain. Worst case scenario if it doesn’t boot correctly I am just stuck with Entune, not the end of the world. There is some trouble shooting you can do by rebooting the head unit but every-now-and-then a reboot won’t work, but turning the vehicle on and off does (don’t ask me why—its likely the same reason why your computer doesn’t work until IT comes and touches it).

Pros:
- Cheap;
- Plug and play;
- Apple CarPlay is great;
- Easy to install/uninstall;
- Retains all OEM mic + screen; and
- Easily able to flip back to the Entune system if need be.

Cons:
- Resolution isn’t great—you will notice the difference once stepping into a true Apple CarPlay headunit;
- Delay at ignition; and
- Occasionally it will boot into Entune.


TLDR:
If you are a tinkerer and don’t mind putting up with some small pains this is a great affordable solution to Apple CarPlay/Android Auto. If you are looking for an elegant headunit display that you don’t want to take your eyes off of this probably isn’t it.