iRiver Intros Car-Powered AFT-100 Mobile FM Transmitter

While it was ‘leaked’ a while back, the official release of the new iRiver AFT-100 Mobile FM Transmitter has just hit the airwaves – just in time for the holidays.

We’ve certainly covered a number of FM transmitters coming out this season, and this one looks pretty cool. Teaming up with Aerielle, a company with a ton of FM transmission expertise, iRiver has brought to market an accessory that was definitely missing from their portfolio of products.

The new iRiver AFT-100 Mobile FM Transmitter is a car 12V powered all-in-one unit, plugged directly into a power/lighter outlet. Like other Aerielle transmitters, the AFT-100 turns itself on automatically when you start playing music, and auto shuts off after 30s of inactivity – of course, this is less important when it’s not powering off an internal battery, but nice that it won’t tap the car battery when not in use.

The transmitter has a reasonably long audio cable ending in a standard stereo mini-plug, and is plugged right into the headphone jack of your favorite player – thus, any audio-playing device (MP3 player or otherwise) with a headphone jack can be transmitted through the car stereo. This is great, as it’s player-agnostic, unlike a number of recent iPod-only units (and there’s so many of them because the iPod just massively owns the market right now).

The AFT-100 also has full FM band (88.1MHz - 107.9MHz) coverage, important for finding a clear signal in busy markets, digital tuning with a blue backlit LCD, and three preset buttons for instant access to save ‘known’ open stations. It should roll into retail over the next week, and through the iRiver online store, for approximately $50. Of course, Amazon already has it for less than that, and it is eligible for Amazon’s free super-saver shiping…

Read on for the press release…