The Spotify Car Thing is a bit of an odd device. Situated somewhere in a functional gray area between a smartphone, a typical car audio device, and a virtual assistant, the Spotify Car Thing attempts to carve out its own sub-niche. But just in case you’re not a fan of Spotify, or you’re just looking to explore the current spectrum of car audio options for comparison purposes, we’ve rounded up the closest list of Spotify Car Thing alternatives we could find.
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Below, we’ll show you the devices that are most similar to the Spotify Car Thing in terms of functionality. But as we said, the Spotify Car Thing is as ambiguous as its name — and is, quite literally, a thing unto itself. Nonetheless, we’ll cover a few similar devices and a few alternatives to the Car Thing that you might want to consider, looking at where they excel and where they fall short. Feel free to leave us your questions in the comments below!
The Echo Auto is probably the best comparison you can make to the Car Thing. As an Echo device, it’s essentially Alexa in a box, capable of pretty much everything the Spotify Car Thing can do and maybe a little more. You can play Spotify or Apple Music, stream Audible, listen to iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, and basically everything else you can do with your phone, as well as doing all sorts of other Alexa-centric tasks like checking your email, making calls, or accessing your smart home accessories via voice control. So the Echo Auto arguably has the edge over the Spotify Car Thing in terms of pure functionality; it’s a jack of all trades, whereas the Car Thing is a specialist. The design, with its preset buttons and physical dial, makes it much more user-friendly for general audio use than the Echo Auto.
The KinivoBTC 450 is pretty much the most basic Spotify Car Thing alternative out there. The Kinivo is a hands-free Bluetooth adapter and lacks the screen and other bells and whistles of the Car Thing, but it works somewhat similarly physically, with a multifunction button for activating hands-free calling and two media buttons to control your music. So not quite the same feature set, with a bit more in the overall functionality (via your smartphone) and a bit less in the control and convenience department when it comes to your audio consumption.
