Everybody loves a good infotainment system in their car, but we don’t always like the price or the training course required to learn them. There’s a new product called recPOP that can give you all those precious ‘infos’ and ‘tainments’ straight from a device you already know well: your smartphone.
RoadEyesCams, a dashcam manufacturer founded in 2011, developed the recPOP to emulate the convenience and futuristic flavor of military-style head-up displays (HUD). While it doesn’t project information straight onto the windshield, it comes pretty close.
Using a Wi-Fi connection, recPOP pairs to your Android or iOS phone and projects its display onto a 6.2-inch color screen mounted on the dashboard. Think of it as a wirelessly-controlled mirror: if it’s on your phone, you’ll see it on the recPOP.
From there, you can use apps like Google Maps and Waze to plan your routes without constantly looking down at your lap. You still have to use your cell to plug in the route, as the recPOP’s screen is not an interface, but the larger display makes navigation much simpler if your car has no onboard option.
It goes further than that too, because recPOP will display emails, texts, incoming calls, web pages, silly animated .gifs, and just about anything else you desire. When the device is unplugged from the 12V port or turned off, the devscreen goes translucent for an unobstructed view of the road.
There’s even an integrated loudspeaker, making directional prompts and phone conversations much more clear, as well as rear-view camera connectivity for easy parking.
RoadEyesCams’ recPOP comes with a Wi-Fi dongle, HDMI cable, and micro USB cable and is available now for about $335.
