In this review, I look at the LAMTTO 9.26″ Portable Car Stereo Display. You can currently buy this car screen for $79.99 from Amazon US – https://amzn.to/3Aywbl5, and for £89.99 from Amazon UK – https://amzn.to/3AJIfjm.
TLDR: The LAMTTO 9.26-inch portable car display is a budget-friendly option with features like wireless CarPlay/Android Auto, Bluetooth connectivity, and multiple mounting options. While it has some limitations like subpar FM audio quality and slow wireless casting, it provides a decent user experience for the price point. The display is a good choice for those looking to upgrade an older car’s infotainment system without spending much.
The market has been flooded with portable car displays that offer the ability to use your iPhone or Android mobile via a portable screen in a car that just has an FM car radio system. They come in a variety of ratios and specs, with widely varying prices as well.
The LAMTTO 9.26-inch display joins this fleet of displays. With its budget-friendly price point, it manages to make itself taller and shout louder over its competition.
In the box, you get the 9.26-inch display, two mounting options, an adhesive dashboard plate, a 12V to USB-C power cable, a 3.5mm connecting AUX cable, spare adhesive pads, clips and a prying tool for cable management, an instruction manual and a warranty card.
Features & Design
The display is fairly simple in its features and design. You have to keep reminding yourself of its price point to understand why. On the top is a sleep switch for the display, below is a single microphone input hole, and to the rear left side of the display is the USB-C power port, an AV IN port for the optional reverse camera. There’s an AUX port for a wired audio connection to your car stereo (if it has one of these).
Mounting the display is simple, thanks to two options. There is one dashboard mount with a base adhesive pad pre-installed, or a windscreen mount can be repurposed as an elevated dashboard mount using the supplied adhesive dashboard plate.
Boot-up & Menu Interface
Once mounted and connected to power, after igniting the car system to power the display, you’re faced with a supercar launch screen followed by the main menu interface within 9 seconds. Five main menu options display on its widescreen, with a side dock with quick options to return to the home screen, adjust volume and screen brightness, and toggle the screen on/off.
You have access to enter the display system settings, adjust Bluetooth controls and functionality, enter into CarPlay or Android Auto mode, and finally toggle between the display’s four audio output modes, of the five main options.
Entering CarPlay or Android Auto displays some additional functionality of this display. Bluetooth is used for transmitting audio to the display over Bluetooth, wireless CarPlay and Android Auto are available, and there is AirPlay and AndroidCast. The latter two options allow you to stream from your phone to the display. Sadly, though, I couldn’t get AirPlay to work, but I was more successful with AndroidCast, which uses a downloadable TCLink app to connect to your Android device. It’s a nice addition but with its high +440ms audio delay, playing any video from apps like YouTube saw lots of audio sync delay alongside the displayed video, resulting in mostly a disappointing experience. Also, due to screen ratio limitations of the cast, if you’re using anything like an iPhone Max, the screen real estate isn’t that far off the phone, which would have zero audio delay.
Wireless Apple CarPlay & Android Auto
Connecting to wireless CarPlay and Android Auto took around 17 seconds from pairing to each mobile over Bluetooth. This is a little long compared to the latest wireless adapters, but that requires the hardware in your car to be compatible. Once you acknowledge this fact, 17 seconds becomes an acceptable boot-up speed. This is a portable car stereo display that can be mounted in any old car, boat, RV, caravan, etc.
Once in CarPlay or Android Auto, the experience is decent. It’s not the smoothest of response times and interactivity, but it’s acceptable considering the price and spec of this hardware. There’s no pinch and zoom support on this display in Android Auto maps, so there is a limit there. Sound quality from the built-in microphone was acceptable and call return delay was anywhere between 1-2 seconds – not the best but certainly not the worst either.
Audio Output Options
To play back audio from the display, you need to choose from either the tiny onboard speaker, wireless FM audio or Bluetooth, or wired via the AUX cable connection. The speaker audio is only suitable for map narration and voice calling. FM offers a wireless connection to even the most basic FM car stereo, but in practice, my VW car stereo had serious static occurring during all low frequencies in my music. This made it not fit for use in my car setup, so I’d advise caution if FM is your only means of connecting to this car display.
AUX is the best and only wired connection, but it introduces another wire that you need to loop around your car interior. If you have this port and you’re up for the challenge of some serious cable management, then this is the next best option.
Those with a little more modern Bluetooth car stereo can opt for the Bluetooth audio mode. This mode simply connects to the display over Wi-Fi for wireless CP/AA and the audio is left on your phone. Once paired to your car stereo, it will bellow out clear and crisp audio through your car stereo speakers, whilst also giving you access to your audio controls located on your steering wheel. Sadly, microphone input comes from your phone microphone in this mode, so you have to make sure the phone is nearby if you wish to cast clear recorded audio to a caller or for audio messages and dictation to the Google Assistant or to Siri.
The Budget-Friendly Option
There are displays that can cost up to three times the price of the LAMTTO 9.26-inch car display, yet the user experience isn’t that far off being that different. If you can look past the slightly quirky screen alignment quality, limited port options, lack of FM transmission quality, unusable casting, and a slightly slow-ish wireless connection, then the LAMTTO car display is a decent option for the budget-conscious who’s looking to future-proof their existing, and old, car system.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Brief overview
0:41 – Unboxing
1:19 – Features & design
2:36 – Boot-up & menu interface
3:26 – Settings & options
5:31 – Wireless CarPlay
8:22 – Wireless Android Auto
10:16 – AirPlay iPhone casting
11:05 – Android Cast
12:51 – Installation & mounting
14:37 – Boot-up
15:00 – FM audio output
16:46 – AUX audio output
18:05 – Bluetooth audio output
22:23 – My Impressions
