Let’s talk car stereos. Well, not really car stereos, but iPod integration into car stereos. How do you listen to your music, assuming you do it digitally? For years, I’ve been satisfied with using this FM transmitter, which had a pretty strong signal in Hawaii. Here in Maryland I couldn’t get a good sound out of it to save my life, and decided to look into other means of getting my tunes while I drive.

At first I looked at getting an after-market stereo with an aux input, so I could go straight from the headphone jack of my iPod to the stereo. But then I thought about the fact that I would need to charge the iPod, too, resulting in two wires bothering me. Couple those wires with my new GPS unit, and I’ve got too much shit going on. So then I looked into getting a stereo with iPod integration – where you plug it directly into a cable and hide it in your glovebox, and navigate the iPod on the stereo itself. After looking up some reviews, I settled on the Sony Xplod CDXGT820IP, which is going for $160 on Amazon right now. I decided to pay $200 for it at Circuit City because they had free installation.

First off, thank you Sony for coming up with a name for your stereo that just rolls off the lips. Come on everyone, let’s say it together – Xplod CDXGT820IP – now isn’t that nice. Okay, piece of crap name, one strike against you.

Luckily, there are so many good things about this stereo that the name is manageable. First off, iPod integration is just about the coolest thing in the world. The sound quality is perfect, which is something I’m not used to after all these years with the FM transmitter. The navigation is fairly easy, and you can do things more quickly on the stereo than you can on an actual iPod; for instance, you can shuffle by artist or by album on the fly, whereas on the iPod you have to go into the settings each time you want to toggle it. It also lets you browse through your library in 10% increments – for someone with 15k+ songs, that feature is a godsend.

The only quirk I don’t like is this – after I’ve picked an album (say, Flock of Seagull’s self-titled debut) I can’t go right back to that artist and pick a different album. I have to start over and find the artist, then the album, etc. Also, it doesn’t work with the volume controls on my steering wheel, so I have to get used to not having that convenience any more. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to never have to mess with my iPod while driving ever again.