CarPuride vs Chigee AIO-5 PLAY for BMW

[Taffey]

Greetings Farroaders and Buttsters

I recently came across two CarPlay products CarPuride and Chigee, in that order. Since acquiring my Nav-prepared BMW GSA 1250, I have gone through 5 or 6 Nav6's (bought once and faithfully replaced each time it failed by BMW) before acquiring as a swap BMW's SmartPhone cradle, which I used for a couple of years but always found it a bit of a faff to be honest and difficult to manage as I used a second phone which required me to run two prepay accounts to get the full experience.

I have two cars that use CarPlay and seen a couple of newer bikes being configured to allow CarPlay to work - i.e. Honda's African Twin and wondered whether BMW would bite the bullet and introduce it.

Well, they didn't or haven't yet, which brings me back to the beginning of this post re: CarPuride and Chigee.

So I bought a CarPuride unit and it dutifully arrived. While the installation of the unit is straightforward enough, especially for a NavPrepped BMW, the configuration instructions leave a bit to be desired. But I got it working after some trial and error, and in my first configuration attempt, I could make calls, use the navigation, hear my music, but could not get turn by turn instructions to come through to the helmet. So I tweaked the config and then I could get turn by turn for a while and then it would stop. I have had similar issues with the Sena and figured it might be the problem so then I reset everything and configured the unit again.

This time I used WiFi to connect the phone and connected the Sena to the unit directly (instead of driving both the CarPuride and the Sena with the Phone). This worked best (but not fully) until I tried to call someone and then it started to flake a bit.  And by this I mean the screen would flick between CarPlay and the default interface while attempting to make a call to number 666666  .

Over three weeks of ownership, I was starting to resent my purchase, particularly as I then came across the Chigee product that looks a lot better, and was fully integrated with the BMW wonder-wheel to allow for true hands free use.

So over a beer or two one night I decided to cut my loss and bought the Chigee, with the intention of trying to persevere with the CarPuride and if not return the unit for a refund on the basis that it was not working properly.

So while my Chigee was on its way from A Bike Thing in the UK, and through some considerable trial and error and quick responses from CarPuride support I determined the cause of the flakiness (well pretty confident I have because the CarPuride is now working perfectly) was all down to some earlier attempts of mine to configure the unit correctly. I might also add that the support people at CarPuride were quick to respond but did not in the end determine what was going wrong; but I suspect they would have got me there because their two hints did help in my own education of how the unit should operate.

The upshot of the problem was that I set the audio-out to the unit's WiFi device which would automatically connect to the Bluetooth device, replacing my Phone and Audio functions in the standard interface.  So when my iPhone was using CarPlay and a call came in, it did not know whether to use the base interface or CarPlay and would have a little hissy fit.  This was all my doing. If you want to check out my stupidity, here is the YouTube video I made to assist the support team to understand what was going on. It's a guide to how not to configure the unit.

So very soon, through every fault of my own, I am going to have both units. So rather the cry into my next beer, I am going to use this as an opportunity to test both and provide my thoughts on them here in this forum.

So far, I have completed one 80km ride with the correctly configured CarPuride working perfectly well.  So I will use it for the ride up to Blinman and if the Chigee arrives in time, I will use it to ride home from Blinman to test it out in a real cross country adventure.

I will post a short summary for both in this thread but folk are welcomed to reach out for more details if they want.

Cheers
Taff

Here are the two units I have purchased

• CarPuride for BMW
• The Chigee for BMW

[Taffey]

Okay, Blinman Farroad ride completed and both units tested. When I stated in the original post that I had the config correct for the Carpuride, I had it so that the Phone connected to the Unit and the Bluetooth Helmet Device (BtHD) also connected to the unit - not the phone. This enabled everything, but the phone and Siri use was not very good - operational, but not great.

Well, it turns out that was not right as the optimal is to connect the Unit to the Phone and the Phone to the BtHD. With the Chigee this just happens, with Carpuride, there is an additional step. So you have to go into Audio Output and select iPlay/Auto and this enables the audio to be sent from the iPhone to the BtHD. Without this extra step, Apple CarPlay will work, you will get music through but the turn by turn and Siri commands do not work at all.

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The Results

If you ride a BMW with Navigation Preparation installed then the Chigee is the easy winner. It is way cheaper than the NavVI (which will fail within 12-24 months of use depending on the amount of riding you do) and the NavVI replacement, the BMW Unit. It works with the Wonderwheel and is completely hands free and it connects to the Bike's Brain, so you get things like a mirror TFT (great for when you need to stand on the pegs) and actual active tyre pressure monitoring with audible warnings when you're under specified pressures.

If you are like me and like tech to simply work without configuration blues, it is also the way to go regardless of whether you have a Nav prepped BMW or not.

If however, you like to tinker and get the right solution that is tailored to you, then the cheaper viable option that is almost as good is the Carpuride, and it is definitely a goer. Once I got the config right, I fell in love with it.

Although note, the Carpuride is easier to steal than the Chigee, so I would not leave the Carpuride on the bike unattended in a dodgy place for long.

The final commentary

This may make it easy for folk...

If you're an Apple Devotee - you will love Chigee
If you're an Android Wizard - you will prefer the Carpuride.

Cheers
Taffey