CRUSADERS CF-100
CAR AIR PURIFIER
Even if you ensure your car meets the strictest pollution norms, there’s no taking away from the fact that merely driving in your car exposes you to a lot more pollutants than is healthy. The Crusaders CF-100 Car Air Purifier (Rs 5,899) comes as a breath of fresh air (quite literally!) for your car. It functions much like a miniaturised home purifier, taking in air through the side vents and pushing it through an elementary pre-filter, an active carbon filter and finally a HEPA filter to remove contaminants and particulate matter as small as 0.3 microns. There’s even an ioniser for dealing with strong odours, and the system is rated for an area of around 60-70 sqft.
On an average, it functions as advertised and takes about 10 minutes to clean and deodorise the air in a sedan (with the windows closed, of course!), with the built-in battery lasting the better part of three hours and rechargeable via microUSB.
LETSTRACK PLUG & PLAY CAR TRACKER
Keeping an eye on your four-wheeler isn’t always possible, especially if you don’t have a secure, designated parking spot. The Letstrack Plug & Play GPS tracker plugs into the on-board diagnostics port of your car and works in tandem with a smartphone app to stay connected to your car. Via the app, you can track in real time on a map where your car is, or where it has been in the past 24 hours, if it has been overspeeding in someone else’s hands, or even be alerted whenever it enters or leaves a designated area. It’s plug and play, so you don’t need to have someone come over to install the gadget and you can even swap it from one car to another in a jiffy.
The Rs 5,999 price includes annual subscription charges for the data SIM card for the first year, and Letstrack charges between Rs 750 and Rs 1,200 a year thereafter, depending on how many years you extend the service. Small price to pay for peace of mind, I say.
TARGUS CAR POWER INVERTER APV018AP
Charging your smartphone or dashcam in the car is easy enough, but what if you’re a road warrior with a laptop that’s constantly running out of juice between your meetings? Targus’s APV018AP, an AC automotive 200W power inverter, is exactly what the doctor ordered. Just plug it into a lighter socket, place the coffee flask-shaped unit in a cup holder and the APV018AP converts your car’s 12V DC into a three-pin 230V AC socket, which is good enough to charge camera batteries, run laptops or power smaller electrical appliances like shavers, car vacuum cleaners and the like, just as long as you don’t exceed the power rating. An additional on-board USB port helps fast-charge smartphones and tablets with a 2.1A power output as well.
Naturally, with such inverter systems, heat is an issue and while the built-in ventilation fans keep the internal components from overheating, I’d recommend keeping the air-conditioning on alongside. At Rs 3,450, it’s priced sensibly for the utility it delivers, particularly on long journeys.
BLAUPUNKT DVR 3.0 DASHCAM
With cases of road rage mounting, getting yourself a car dashboard camera is akin to an insurance policy, working silently in the background yet invaluable should you ever need it! The Blaupunkt DVR 3.0 FHD (Rs 12,490) is a feature-packed option, with 1,080p, 30fps video recording via its 140-degree wide lens, GPS/date-timestamps and motion detection capabilities, which allow the dashcam to automatically start recording when it detects motion. The video quality is where the DVR 3.0 pulls ahead of some of the cheaper dashcams I’ve seen, with crisp well-exposed daytime footage and fairly usable night-time footage. The battery lasts about an hour, which is okay, given you’re going to have this plugged in at most times. At its price though, it lacks Blaupunkt’s characteristic fit and finish and, coupled with the low-resolution screen, you end up thinking this should have been a cheaper product.
BLAUPUNKT TPM 2.14 USB
If you’re a petrolhead, you probably stress about the optimal pressure for your car tyres a lot more than most folks. The Blaupunkt TPM 2.14 USB Tyre Pressure Monitoring System, as the name suggests, keeps you clued into your tyre’s health in real time, whether they are under/over inflated or heating up. Installation of the sensors on each tyre is super simple as long as you keep the included mini spanner handy. You need the spanner to turn the safety nut, which prevents the sensors from falling off the tyre or being stolen. So you’ll also need to keep it handy each time you refill your tyres, which gets a bit tedious, if you ask me. Your patience is rewarded by a real-time view of your tires on the display, which is powered by your lighter socket and communicates to each of the tires over Bluetooth.
Blaupunkt has thoughtfully provided a USB port on the display so that you don’t lose the ability to charge your phone, dashcam, etc., but the not insignificant price point (Rs 18,990, though the street price is lower) will deter all but the most dedicated car enthusiasts.
Tushar Kanwar is a tech columnist and commentator.
Follow him on Twitter @2shar.
Mail your tech queries to t2onsunday@abp.in
