Bluetooth adapter brings digital music, calls to cassette decks

Got an older set of wheels with a cassette deck instead of a CD player? Here's a clever gadget that'll bring Bluetooth to your vintage dashboard with a minimum of fuss.First spotted by Crave, the Flexii Bluetooth Cassette Adapter ($40) is just that—a cassette tape-shaped module with a built-in Bluetooth receiver and rechargeable lithium battery. Just charge up the Flexii, pair it with your cell phone or a Bluetooth-enabled music player (like the Samsung YP-P2), slide it into your car's cassette deck, and you're good to go.

The makers of the Flexii say that the adapter's battery is good for five hours of talk time or 120 hours of stand-by time, and you control the volume on your car stereo or your MP3 player/cell phone. From the looks of the device, it appears that it works more like a remote Bluetooth speaker than a listen/talk receiver, so you're probably better off using it for playing music than taking calls.

Overall, pretty cool—and if you're looking for an even cheaper way to play digital music through an old-style cassette deck, don't forget that plenty of wired cassette adapters with 3.5mm jacks are available, some as cheap as $5. I used one for years with my Rio 500 (talk about vintage audio gear) in my old Saturn, and the sound was excellent—much better than you'll get from an FM transmitter.