VERTICAL (and Horizontal) CarPlay Display in ANY CAR – Eonon P5 Car Stereo Display Review

In this video, I look at the Eonon P5 vertical and horizontal car stereo display. You can buy this vertical Apple CarPlay display for $99.99 direct from Eonon.com, get €/£10 OFF using coupon CARPLAYLIFE  (valid until March 16, 2025), for $89.99 with coupon from Amazon US – https://amzn.to/3BvyRki, for £85 from Amazon UK – https://amzn.to/4ggJQgD, and for €87.35 from Amazon DE – https://amzn.to/49Dwf0u.

TLDR: The Eonon P5 Portable CarPlay Display is a versatile and affordable solution for modernising older cars with features like wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and unique vertical display support. Its 8.95-inch IPS screen offers both horizontal and vertical orientations, making it a standout option for drivers looking for more flexibility. Setup is simple, and mounting options include a magnetic dashboard arm and windscreen mount, though cable management can be tricky. Audio options range from AUX and FM to Bluetooth for improved sound quality. While vertical mode enhances the CarPlay and Android Auto experience by displaying more app icons, it also introduces challenges with mounting and compatibility for certain apps and media. At $99.99, it’s a strong contender, though pricier alternatives may offer better value for landscape-focused setups.

CarPlay displays have become a popular choice for modern car interiors. Many brands now offer familiar black-screen displays that can be mounted in any car to bring old car technology into the present. These displays feature wireless CarPlay and Android Auto, media playback, and even some built-in dash cams. However, until now, none of these displays offered a way to display their content vertically. The P5 Portable Stereo Display from Eonon breaks this mould by providing a vertical and horizontal mounting option for car stereo displays. 

Features & Design

In the box, you’ll find a paper instruction manual, the P5 display itself, two mounting options (one magnetic dashboard mount and one windscreen mount), a USB-C to 12V power adapter with a USB-A pass-through port, a metal adhesive dashboard disc, a reverse camera and cable, and a prying tool and adhesive clips. 

The display measures 8.95” diagonal. From the side, the display features a slim profile with a small box-like section on the back that houses the display rather limiting I/O ports, which include a USB-C port for power, a 3.5mm AUX port, an AV IN port, and a TF card slot for music-only playback.

On the front, the display looks nice, thankfully it is clean and minimal, without any logos, and it features some fairly slim bezels down the longest sides, but unfortunately, they get a little chunkier on the shorter sides. An even-sized bezel would have made it look more professional and work better with both vertical and horizontal orientations.

Boot-up & Main Menu

Powering up the display takes 9 seconds. The menu was a little dated-looking, almost reminiscent of an old Android tablet operating system. It displays a few key function icon buttons for CarPlay, Android Auto, AirPlay, Super Link, Audio output and Settings. A TF card and Bluetooth media playback area dominate almost half of the display and at a the bottom there is a drawer of options that features the all-important vertical and horizontal switching buttons.

Tapping this system button will reboot the display and switch the display’s orientation between vertical and horizontal modes – don’t get excited, the display doesn’t auto-rotate like a BYD central display. Once set, you must manually rotate the display to suit the set software orientation. The main menu will then adapt to the new orientation and so will settings, AirPlay and casting, media playback, Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto.

Wireless Apple CarPlay & Android Auto

Launching into wireless Apple CarPlay took 9 seconds, and a total of 22 seconds from boot-up. Using CarPlay horizontally on the P5 display can look like any car stereo display selling over the last few years. It works well though, thanks to the IPS display’s wide-angle view. But flip the display vertically, and the in-car and app experience changes, in some instances, for the better. 

A vertical display offers more app icons in CarPlay on the P5. You go from 8 app icons in horizontal mode to 12 apps per screen in vertical mode. This vertical view offers less switching between your favourite app screens, and the Home Screen becomes a little more usable too with a slightly larger maps tile poised at the top of the display and the dock now spanning the lower bottom part of the display. 

Launching into Android Auto from Bluetooth pairing took 12 seconds and 29 seconds including the initial boot-up time. Due to how Android Auto works in vertical mode, interaction works a little better than CarPlay in some instances. In many cases, a vertical display can feel just right in a car interior. Just as long as a vertical screen can be mounted correctly in your car interior.

Mounting the display

Mounting the P5 is offered with the included two mount options. The first is a common suction cup windscreen mount that we have seen bundled with nearly every car display on the market these days. The second mounting option is something a little different. First of all, it’s magnetic in its design, which attaches itself magnetically to the back of the display, like MagSafe for an iPhone. This is great if you wish to unmount the display often for security. The arm can be bent and manipulated to suit the curvature of a dashboard interior so that it can be hung lower than the dashboard surface and over the car’s central display area. 

The mounting arm itself has to be stuck to the dashboard by either of its two preattached 3M sticker pads, each located on either side of the mounting arm. It’s likely you only use one of these, so the other pad will likely remain facing upwards. Unfortunately, this pad cover is coloured red and is not a darker colour, so it stands out like a sore thumb in the car interior. It ideally should’ve been black or grey to match the mount to blend in a little bit better.

This new type of mounting looks good on the surface, but it opens a few other questions about how best to route the display’s power cable around the car’s interior. Having the display hung lower over the centre area of the dashboard, you could opt for a shorter direct run to the 12V socket, but it depends on the 12V socket’s location. Otherwise, the power cable running back to the windscreen will look even more out of place. Thankfully, you can power the display using a USB-A/USB-C to USB-C power cable from a sufficiently powered USB port or 12V USB port adapter. However, if you plan on using the FM audio transmission, which likely requires the power cable for his aerial antenna, FM audio may not work as intended this way.

Introducing an auxiliary cable for audio will improve audio performance over its onboard speaker and FM transmission, but this will be at the cost of an additional cable coming out of the back of the display. AUX audio is greatly improved over FM with less overpowering bass in its overall audio output. Opting for the internal speaker audio should only be considered for those who don’t have any means to connect to a car stereo. It’s ideal for navigation and voice-based audio; however, using the speaker for anything else leaves much to be desired.

Finally, the Bluetooth audio option utilises your phone’s Bluetooth connection with your car’s own Bluetooth audio input, should you have that audio option available on your car’s stereo. This digital audio connection will give you superior audio performance inside your car interior with crisp digital audio pumped through your car speakers, overall, it is a more enjoyable experience. Using BT also adds additional functionality to be able to control your media music playback with any audio controls that you might have on your steering wheel. Microphone input also seemed to come from the display’s own microphone, even when using its Bluetooth audio options, which in a way is a good thing if your vehicle isn’t equipped with an internal microphone.

AirPlay & Mirror Casting

The Eonon P5 comes equipped with an AirPlay mirroring and video casting function for both iPhone and Android devices. Performance in this feature was surprisingly good with little lag between a video and audio playing out over my car speakers. Like with all casting features on these displays, you are limited to non-copyrighted content applications, such as YouTube and TikTok, which I had no problem displaying on the P5 display.

Its included Super Link application allows both Android and iPhone users to mirror cast to the P5 display via a downloaded EveLink app on your phone. Once connected over Wi-Fi,  you can also update the display through this application, which is a nice addition to improving compatibility and adding any new features throughout the lifespan of this display.

My Impressions

At the time of writing, you can find this display on sale right now for $99.99, which is a good price considering its performance and feature specs. The P5 is a capable and fairly versatile car stereo display for any car that doesn’t have today’s modern capabilities to connect with your smartphone. 

Its unique vertical display orientation mode has been a first for me, and in practice, it performs surprisingly well; however, this new vertical option does bring a few new challenges to the table. A landscape display is less of an issue in placing in a car’s interior. Switch vertically and you may face some challenges in mounting the display in your car interior without blocking or covering existing controls and buttons on your centre console. 

A vertical orientation screen also faces issues in apps such as CarPlay and Android Auto, as well as screen casting for any landscape-formatted video. Although this isn’t a fault of the P5 display itself, it has more to do with how these platforms and media handle a vertical screen and the decades we’ve had consuming horizontal media. Thankfully, switching between both orientation modes is fairly quick with the top of the button on the lower main menu; however, requiring time to reboot doesn’t make this feature a seamless function. 

Look at your car’s interior, and if you think it can support the space for a 9-inch 10:16 vertical display, then the P5 Car Stereo Display from Eonon is a display that’s worth considering. If your interior suits a landscape display, the P5 is capable, but for around $50 more than its RRP, there are better screens to be had out there.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 – Brief overview
0:27 – Unboxing
1:12 – Features & design
3:11 – Quick demo of features (internal)
4:31 – Vertical mode
5:19 – Horizontal mode
9:23 – In-car install & demo
13:43 – Boot-up
14:04 – Wireless CarPlay
14:24 – FM audio transmission
16:00 – Microphone test
16:24 – Call quality & delay test
16:42 – Wireless Android Auto
17:45 – Call quality & delay test
18:02 – Vertical display Android Auto
19:12 – Vertical display Apple CarPlay
20:10 – AUX audio test
21:06 – AirPlay & mirror casting
23:13 – Bluetooth audio
25:43 – Internal speaker audio
26:10 – My Impressions

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