Inateck BR1002 Bluetooth transmitter/receiver [Review]

We live in a world where we increasingly expect everything to interface with everything else. New cars come with Bluetooth and wireless connections for example to access information from your phone, and audio systems are able to stream music around your home.

But what if you have an older car, or if you want to link a smartphone to your non-smart home Hi-Fi? Inateck has an answer in the form of the BR1002, a neat little gadget that can turn your older devices into Bluetooth enabled ones.

It's about the size of the sort of remote plipper that you use to lock and unlock a car. Controls are simple, a switch on the side to change between transmit and receive modes and a red button on the front for pairing. On top are a USB port for charging and a 3.5mm jack for connecting to your audio device. There's a printed -- although rather badly translated in places -- instruction leaflet that explains how it works.

Plug it into a USB port and a white ring around the button lights up to show it's charging. A full charge takes around two hours and will give you roughly six hours use as a receiver or eight as a transmitter. It'll beep to tell you the battery is running low. Pairing is simple, hold down the red button for a few seconds until two white LEDs flash and it should be visible to other devices. It'll automatically pair to the last used device when powered on. You can only pair one device at a time, however.

So what can you do with it? Basically the BR1002 lets you turn any device with a 3.5mm audio connector into a Bluetooth enabled one. In receiver mode you can stream music to your car from your phone, or turn an old pair of headphones into wireless ones, or in transmitter mode send sound from your old Walkman to your PC.

It works well in practice with a stable connection and only a very occasional glitch in the audio stream. The audio cable is very short but that shouldn't be a problem for the type of use the device will be put to. That and the fact you can only pair one device at a time are the only real drawbacks to the BR1002. At $21.99 on Amazon it's an inexpensive, versatile and easy to use gadget.

More information is available on the Inateck website.