Gadgetory

good tires who needs a better tech in your Prius probably need that and we're gonna find out what's going on with the upgrades for a suzuki kizashi because so many of you drive one of those it's roadside assistance welcome everybody Brian Cooley with wayne cunningham antuan goodwin and we've got Steven Beach them at the controls today filling in for Mitchell here's we've got in your emails this week and don't forget to get in the show it's easy just send us a question a comment or just a vile screed about what we do here at car tech at cnet com Reuben sandwich his real name writes in and says I'm in the market for tires for my Kia it turns out it came with super cheap tires they always do nexon is the brand never heard of those so he says my Kia is strong and fun but brakes tires an engine of the most important parts of a car so for key to cheap out the on the tires is like driving on butter that means to work at a bicycle importer years ago we used to get these really inexpensive tires and tubes from what was then very exotic from China and the name was die young Dae why UNG but still die young I just very prophetic anyway his question is what kind of tires should he get for his kid that's like wide open he also says PS my mazda which i guess he had before this was hooker red then he found out it was volcanic red and says the salesman pulled pulled one on me you were disappointed that weren't you you thought you had a car that was hooker rate he told all your friends in fact you were cool for a minute I'm kind of wondering what he's doing with his Kia that he needs new tires i right he doesn't tell us what kind of key he's driving and there aren't that many fast ones like okay maybe you're out there shredding your what turbo what what's the Kia that matches the Sonata kia oh the optima optimum the trouble Optimus Valley sporty what about the 40 the 40 coupe oh yeah could be little 42 a high performance version of that one yes soria is performance and driving you know but Lisa's has got crappy tires I bet it's a soul because those seem to come with little skinny tires when I see him unless they have a little wheel package on them let's just shot by vehicle that's against Nixon I never heard of that no never it's like Nick's I've heard of them letting them and why we have to see adds a nice to read a lot of import like tuner car magazines is it a cheap tire I don't know I've never bought I never bought him I just recognized the brand name let's assume he's got a 2010 forte koup sound reasonable yep sure SX is the high trim yes when it'll go through the tire rack here because they are two tires what Crutchfield is to car tech yeah tirerack.com is definitely the place you start looking cuz they got a configurator you can choose your car will tell you what the wheels are and Lily lease the original wheels yeah their data guide their data is the best and they also lets you try different wheels on a car which is cool as the other going to look so let's just rank them here buy cheap and just find you a cheap tire that we think is good you don't want super cheap you wanted something better than that but we don't want to do spend two hundred and thirty bucks a corner like these you're not gonna put potenza re 70s on a cot that makes no sense it's perfect friend's house it'll be a thousand dollars a tire change it'll be the best upgrade you man any car hey of course it will oh and they're z-rated so you might get eight thousand miles out of them that's always fun yeah the reason the manufacturers the way they pick their tires is of course there's cost yep but then they also have to they buy them for where life for fuel efficiency they pick them sometimes a lot of times they make deals with certain tire companies to supply tires for all of their vehicles yeah in certain cases like with a Toyota Prius like you know they actually work with the manufacturer of the tire to design a tire for that vehicle but in most cases kind of an off-the-shelf you know sometimes it's a rebranding of a tire that's already maybe it's already a bridge tone something or other yeah kind of rebrand it for that particular manufacturer kinda like so the TV's you see it best buy it's an existing model remodel numbered for Best Buy only yeah you know it's hard for you to cross shop them yeah makes it very tricky so here's an example of some tires are in the low hundred dollar range this to me makes sense for most Kia's again not knowing a model you've got not spending more than the car engineers spent on the suspension hint hint hankook and kumho and you're going to get a lot of these brands that are not traditional tire brands that we know there's also some Continentals in here general still makes tires that's good to know i'm not sure that realize something's very key about this there's like seven or eight tires here under a hundred twenty bucks it's key to know one thing the brown on the tire is usually nonsense now most of the major tire companies long gone out of business and sold their brand to another company that's using their brand it's like a magnavox TV there is no magnavox company anymore but they sell magnavox and Zenith televisions because some company bought the brand so don't get too caught up in getting good years because a lot of good years aren't made by Goodyear a lot of good rich aren't made by Goodrich so this is one of the great BS businesses in the world is tires they will tell you or it's a good you want a good year that's a great time you want a Michelin well who makes it if it says Michelin it says Made in China it's probably subcontracted just a hunch just to who and it could be a great time but you're not buying some legendary heritage michelin tire that has made it some you know handcrafted in some factory in France you know it's not it doesn't work that way right so don't get BS buy tires that's that happens all too often also a lot of it is it really depends on as far as like picking a tire what you're going for what's the weather like around your place yeah if you live in a place that is pretty dry most of the year I mean maybe you want to look at some summer tires for four if you're looking for performance or something but if you live in a place where the weather is pretty erratic and unpredictable then maybe you want a nice all season tire or in you know yeah never underestimate a good snow tire in a place that gets a lot of snow and slippery conditions additionally you want to look at things like where life if you go through if you're going through a set of tires every year you probably want to look at the way you're driving but be you want to make sure that you're buying tires that have the where life that you're looking for and you can oftentimes find even within the same brand of tire the same like a sub brand of tire different where life's you know basically what happens is the stickiness of the tire that sort of grip rating and the the where life of the tire often inversely proportional so you can yes find a nice balance and grip ride quality inn where life there's a lot of different things you want to look at and you Brian actually didn't you do a video yeah the how to read the solder ain't the sidewall there's about 12 12 points of data on the sidewall of the tire ho most folks don't know what most of the me they know about tread wear temperature and there's one other Treadwell Ted where there's the three letters a B it'll say temp treadwear and forget what the third one is everyone knows about that that says right on there what it is action attraction yeah but there's a bunch of other specs on there that are really cryptic and you also want to know what the yellow and the red dots me and I won't even tell you so go over to cnet TV and just search tires I can't imagine we have more than one video on tires and if we do tell me what it is and i'll put a link to the video in the show notes and it will take you through decoding your side walls let's see better Prius tech Dave and Delaware he's gonna know seven Prius he let's see he has a good mount for his iphone four he's got that or he's going to get him out for his iphone four make that a nice little sort of mini pocket head unit in his car great he uses motionx for nav motionx yep popular it's a good navigation for the iphone yeah okay you had to pay for it okay monthly so he's using that for his name yeah doesn't have nav in the dash on an 07 ninety-eight percent of the time though he says I don't need nap most of us don't we know we're going so what should he run in the foreground when he's not using nav is kind of like a wide open question what should I do when I Drive not like what music app or what traffic app according to Ray LaHood he should stare at the road it's a little wheel the simple answer is you should be driving you just for driving your car if you don't need to look at somewhere else don't look somewhere else although he may want a music app youtube facebook Joe get naked chicks calm these are all great when you're driving serious commemorate if I if for me if I were doing it i would probably put up a some sort of performance meter I mean it's a Prius it's a little silly what little i would use it for the opposite reason by G forces on yet to measure how smoothly i'm driving y and to keep the G forces within a certain amount I mean of course the priests already has like fuel economy meters and stuff built into that but if it's just you just want something moving around on the dashboard yeah he doesn't hurt you don't need that when you wanted to go traffic yeah what I definitely go traffic because even though he says he doesn't use his nab ninety percent of eight ninety percent of the time and that's true i mean most of us know where we're going yeah but if you're driving in any urban area there's likely to be traffic and you want to know about that before you hidden the problem of course with most nav apps that you know it'll tell you about the traffic that you're in right good thank you which is actually a good reason to have a nav system that has traffic with it and even if you you're going on a normal route you always drive plug in that destination anyway you're not going to care about the turn-by-turn but you're going to carry out if it says oh there's you know a 10 mile backup up ahead or at the very least just run the map if you have a live map i'll do this on the android phone and just look at what the traffic just do the traffic over light and just see where traffic is and i can look at my route really quick and see if there's a red line where the normally isn't i'll do that sometimes yeah there's a good traffic app inrix traffic there a big traffic provider the in works happen is really good too has really good up to date information huh I you know I mean not all this stuff is you know you might get into something that hasn't been reported yet which always sucks yeah and I mean there's also like you can leave ways open just so that you can be necking goodies yeah or you drive around points that's really why that sometimes I just run wave just for the point what was the virtual are the augmented reality app that we talk about my own Road I on road I don't remember I think there's an iphone version of that but that's like a collision detection app that's right in the road ahead of you to make sure you don't run into something I don't know if the I iOS version of vlingo does this but the Android version has this thing called what safe reader the reader text message is allowed to you oh so if you if you better Nashville and there's also an in-car interface that basically lets you just talk to it so you can say like hey vlingo and it ago what up dog and you can go send a text message to brian saying i'm going to be late and it'll do that no one has to touch the dice on iOS of course I think Siri would do this yes siree should do similar things yeah so basically matter what do you do in the car we can't you know tell you what you should do in the car because that's the first question before you decide what should I be running on the phone to help me do that and if you don't do anything that needs a nap then don't run an app there's no reason to be distracted this is becoming a big deal see car tech live from the same day there if there if you can find a nap I should probably look this up if you can find one of those driver quarter apps that maybe uses the front face camera to do some sort of recording in case you get an accident if you're nice okay paranoid yeah just you know like I think the napping fifth that does that or face that backwards and do your own version of that cab game show cash cab we use a question pick up pick up hitchhikers try to pick up hitchhikers pull over and say hey you want a ride somewhere and everything's like no I wait for a real cab or better yet they don't even looking for a ride they're just walking down the sidewalk get pulled over hey do you want a ride no the app is a drive me Trek and it basically uses the drive may Trek WRC like for record oh okay I was like is you're gonna wreck your roc for record basically it records video while you're driving and if you get in a fender bender you tap a button it'll like grab that kind of cool and yeah I thought video this morning we're on the internet workload um guy backed into another guy in traffic and then got out and tried to say you you you ran into me and the guys like no no I got a camera on my dad look my car was dating and I wasn't moving and they could save you a couple of hundred bucks that's my if something happened that's kind of cool actually there's anything that you could run that you would want to just have running all the time because that's the thing you have to use something that religiously because you don't know when you're going to have needed any so let's go if you didn't you just get in the habit of running all the time seems a little odd but if you want that's cool hey maybe your rod that's all right we're going on it Dave we're good without its ok let's see Rodney's got a kizashi our condolences now Kenny 2010 kizashi well yeah 2010 our condolences rockford fosgate system i wanna replace it with a JVC 50 h dt which is a surround head unit would it be worth the upgrade only thing i see is the nav where i can place a garment on the windshield for that because my car has bluetooth streaming is my sauron phone thanks and guys enjoy the show we're going to send you a family sized box of punctuation then look at your question what would you do with Rodney the the 50 hdt that what is the KW NT 50 hdt unit he's asking about it's a pretty good stereo it's got HD radio it's got navigation into it it is a good replacement if you don't have the well I guess the kizashi you can't even get nav on that he does mention that yeah you pretty much you are stuck with that uh well if you want nav will stick a garment on your dashboard and wire it into the system so yeah I would say it's worth upgrading the only thing that I would look at is you have the Rockford Fosgate system so there's aunt somewhere yeah but you're going to have to tap into so that's a robust system yeah and but I mean the thing is that you know it's just an amp it's not like a you know anything that's really tricky but you want to look at the detailed instructions on on on how to how to plug into that and get an interface kit the ordered him yet go somewhere and have it installed which you know he may actually be doing he didn't state whether he was going to do it or not in the off but if you go someone have installed they'll be able to figure that out for you but yeah that garmin system is good but it's not really well integrated and yeah the jvc system that he's talking about it's got a big 6.1 inch screen big ish i think we're looking at it here is this it yep that's the one sisters on ebay for 760 not cheap I mean as far as nav head units go 760 is kinda cheap yeah for the melee float around 1,200 bucks yeah but that class of product he's looking at is it that's a full-bore head unit right and jb SI unit for pricing goes there they're a bit on the on the low end of the price anyway okay for a 6.1 inch pioneer that does the same thing is if you're you're looking at about a thousand bucks maybe a little maybe a little less maybe a little street yeah we will now one thing I'm thinking he lose here is on the rockford fosgate head unit it has those special DSPs settings for different sound fields they call them yeah right where you can make it sound like a concert hall put a bunch of echo on it and all that kind of stuff but do this what you want a ride around in a Cathedral a little super bass setting to or you can just like I have the subwoofer like bang out everything I love no way to invoke those profiles even if they're built into the amp and still exist what control would invoke them well I think that sort of thing happens in the receiver anyway that dfp so yeah so I think it it just all of that sort of DST the signal processing and adding echo and and volume is a little going away all that happens in the receiver and then it just says every signal is going to send to the amp to be amplified I'm pretty sure that's how that works well whatever it is is gonna he's going to have some sacrifice on that and we're just trying to say that it might be a challenge which may not be much of a sacrifice as well I mean when you install this this jvc system it's gonna have its own eq anyway so if you want to be up the bass up you'll still be able to do that that you just won't be using a stupid loudness algorithm that makes me music sound worse anyway but if you love this out of that rockford fosgate whether it's rational or not some folks like a certain kind of really inaccurate audio because it's just the sound they like fact most of us have some kind of a bias towards some really inaccurate kind of sound it's just the way it is you may not get that same particular sound back but I think there'd be a way to reproduce it well then if you just take time yeah we're gonna filling alright so that's why that's what you can do with that and yes it's a nice upgrades a big upgrade ER Dube that's that's like night and day from a text ribbon read out to a full LCD nav live traffic as well everything's in there 005 subi legacy GT hung in Virginia talks about this one let's say he's got an in-dash CD that's about it then he went and got an aftermarket parrot I 9200 which is a hands-free Bluetooth system has a cool little dashboard you kind of velcro under your dash little knob and a couple of buttons and all this and so he's got all this going on he's got let's see he even gave away his garmin nav does its google android phone as he says better maps better traffic etc etc his question after all this Odyssey is do we even need factory car tech anymore you were talking with this last week right this question came out last week and and I kind of babbled on for about 45 minutes about it what did you babble to the conclusion well I came to the conclusion that different strokes for different folks so it's you know they're mean there are people who who just want to buy a car you know like they they go to the BMW dealership they just want to buy BMW that does all this awesome stuff yeah and that's just the kind of person they are they don't want to fiddle around adding things onto it they don't want to fiddle around I mean these are the same people that's most people yeah exactly the kind of people who were just like you know I can't run this game owned by a new computer instead of like afraid my videos right I mean we all know that person and they are most people yeah yeah on all those cases so there's that the twenty percent will upgrade their gear the eighty percent will just go buy something new right for reasons of both maybe lack of technical prowess and lack of time so if we're talking about the average person here who just wants a you know an everyday car that has everything running you get it and it's going then yeah you're gonna pay you you'll pay for the convenience the factory is going to NICU thousands to have all that stuff done versus you using your phone which brings a lot of it for free yeah of course with the phone you have to have a mounting spot and this is where we're talking about hooking this stuff up I know if you just want to keep your phone in your pocket you know gonna wear the earbuds get in the car and start driving you know yeah you don't want to your dab on your phone because you don't want to pull out of your pocket want to have it like visible on the dash and of course when you get into things like one thing i was looking at recently was a head-up unit a car which is very convenient you know project the program return by turn on the screen yeah you're not going to get that with the phone right I mean that you think I'd you're talking I'm thinking why not you might do that why can't it they do a wireless ipod out and then and that would spawn an industry of little tiny dash top projectors that I bet might sell like hot cakes especially if the d-o-t starts to scare people or they might outlaw that too then there's that isn't there like a film that you can like stick to your windshield and then fit your phone underneath it upside down digs and it'll look like a some seem to recall seeing they'll be backwards it like it wouldn't work in the daytime but at night and be background be able to see it anyway be small wouldn't be magnified at all still be the same real one-to-one but yeah but do head-up displays are small anyway what happens when you take a hard left though in your lexicon slides across right across the data hit up you let that Audi we saw at CES to do this and move the screen back to the driver have to make another hard turn place I don't want to be following that car uh yeah you know I you I mean come on Tony you're taking it you preaching to the choir here I drove an 88 for there's no tech my phone gets clipped on the dashboard and I got everything done I think it works great I could upgrade my head you know I could put a modern stereo in that single din unit but I don't carry well the automaker's the phone are going to add I've seen this a bit is they're getting better and developing these interfaces from the phone to the car I there's I've seen this with equipment makers I saw this at CES actually they had a good iphone interface where that you know most of the stuff is powered on the iphone but showed up on a lot of screen in the car same thing with android that can do that too so they're working at this you know the the problem is right now the pro calls aren't really set in stone yet there's a lot of development going on in that space so and and what's the Android think it's connected car consortium as well car connectivity mirrorlink Marilyn yeah so those are the two things yeah ipod out in mirror link are the two major platform ways to export the video on your screen more or less to an external display typically in a car but the issue here is and if you missed car tech live this week most of you subscribe to both so i encourage you to go check the show or if you don't subscribe to a car tech live as well over at car tech cnet com we had our lead story this week about how the feds are starting to rattle the cages of car makers pretty seriously about what they let you do in cars in terms of factory tech i can imagine the first thing that the factories cut is stuff like support for ipod out or the android connectivity because that makes them part and parcel of a wild west i'm in car distraction they're saying we're just going to enable you to do whatever you want factory sponsored because we're gonna let you bring your display in but then we're just going to say old be safe or we're not going to regulate it much that sounds like a red like this it's not really a wild west though I mean there's a there's a certification process for getting your app approved for both of these things yeah for ipod out and for well not for ipod out but definitely for the mirror link car connectivity can sort something they have a process where you have to submit your app for approval to use the protocol just so that you don't end up with you know first person shooter that's what is that one of the filters or they start drinking for technical call they're filtering it for to make sure that you you conform to the technical aspect but then also there's a there is a you know sort of a well this isn't really an appropriate for car sort of thing so they're envisioning mirrorlink is strictly a car thing yeah it's definitely for this if it's sponsored by the car connectivity consortium so it's a diff okay that's okay it's all car all right but that's so then they are having some say over the road to how you know would forward with which sync applink yeah Ford Apple Inc is it think Apple II just what are they cutting rattling I think it's seek a plague I thought it for a blog is under neither they're naming convention is horrible but the same thing there were you know they only have like four or five apps but that's just because it's not open you have to come to them and say like hey we'd like to to use a to develop a heart rate monitor for the car and then they have to go like we also do it safely right by gosh okay so that's that some takes on you know how to use your phone yeah it's it's yes your question is almost leading the phone does it all and more for way less money and is far more malleable and updatable than any car will ever be it's almost like there's no reason not to accept people love the very large display they like the built in nature nothing's falling and sliding and hanging off the glass let's face when you clip a phony where it looks nasty it's some nasty $29 suction cup no one makes a good car mount for a smartphone they may call junkie ones when where is the Apple quality windshield mount they're only the only a plat for a paleta that's the thing there are a lot of good iphone windshield mount feder sturdy really is really nice ones and they don't do that yeah then and I think was last week didn't we talk about like the the tomtom car mount no yeah that was life but you guys weren't here we like the tomtom car kit is rock solid and it has a GPS receiver in it and it has a speaker in it no nice it's a good receiver and there are other ones that you know the thing about the iphone is it's it's shaped like an iphone when once you start you know getting into like android tablets everything that every android phones everything gather size so you into a universal things that have the clamps and then there on the end of like a six inch neck that jiggles around i've got one now that i use for for my thunderbolt and the funny thing is when i hit a bump it jiggles about half an inch in every direction so if you try to get a play whoa whoa there we go yeah i guess i got this piece of crap right here this is the one that I syst your standard sort of articulated suction cup it's just nasty the ring behind the phone that you use to tighten it in position is so cheaply made it always snaps I refuse to buy another mount cuz you can't buy parts for it so I've got it all fixed up with electrical tape it's just a mess so ghetto wait that's the the OEM droid one right yeah that's a good wrote no not mine I think the thing is you keep you keep taking it out of cars are probably putting in another car yeah it's in and out all the time most people would snap that on the dashboards leave but that I would never leave in like our that hideous I mean that first of all where are where are the nice sort of top of dash mounts that's what I want their kind of like a a molded sort of an OEM style little a little hump that is you know each one molded for the major styles of phones and with this interchange will set a tray the thing is those use D either have to use adhesive of some sort yeah or they just they're just going to slide over the desk visualize a car maker saying we're going to do a universal metal plate underneath the dash under the upholstery you can't see it but there's a zone there and we're going to sell a line or at least licensed manufacturers to make a line of these sort of lumps that will be the same upholstery color magnetically clamp on there the magnets in the car mount the plates just inside the dash that's a great standard that should be out there and give me something looks kind of like the design of the car not this nasty plastic thing if I go buy a fifty-thousand-dollar BMW that's a cheap one and I don't decide to get I Drive I want to use my droid I'm not going to stick this thing in there I'm a belated what's happening is though you're saying that I want something that's Universal on both ends and that just it's doable it well I mean it just gets even clunkier as far as like the introduces with cell phones years ago they had these the lot of the car makers either sponsored or they all sold these into dealerships where it was it was upholstered in automaker materials they would you know tell him here's here's where we source our material and the after make it after martin company would go buy a bunch of it and they would make their products out of it and it would clip on the side of your console it be stitched the same way and would have a place for your phone to go it was like what how much it was a time about 120 bucks this was years ago so be a pricey piece a suction cup mount $10 yeah but if you buy a nice car you don't want that I Drive a buyer of a non nice car I'd hope this damn thing sittin there all the time it's like gas plus it's got that well I guess they both would it says I have something valuable in the car so there's they both have that problem well if it's a phone I'd sorry it's probably win with you right but for some reason people keep breaking into cars when they see the suction kiss on the way the scene that veil was broken into for the tomtom gps mal for a tomtom do it was it was just a mounting them out but it had the Pat was one of the ones where the power cable connects to the mountain yeah yeah and then you just snap the Tom time into it and I got out of the car and left it suction cup to the dashboard plugged into the cigarette lighter and I come back in the window smash the cradle is gone stereo still in the dashboard mind you and it's just barely in their full installation is jumping around the could just pull it out earlier I've just pull stereo but they just they stall the car kit and it was more of a opportunity it's like oh I could smash and grab that and they got away with with what's probably $25 they got they got a car kit for a tomtom but not the time at the time time just stole the mountains my backpack and the 12 volt plug yep that's it yep unbelievable window and right yeah we had to pay to get the window repair for a $25 I guess they thought you left the tomtom under the cedar in the glove box they probably rifled for it but no no everything like a live box with closed anything with rifle this was somebody somebody wanted him out right now there's like I lost my time timeout I really write amazon delivery would have taken a day or two wait there's one and it costs nothing oh god alright alright folks that is car tech I'm sorry roadside assistance for this week wow um send us your questions email car tech at cnet com voice mail 866 401 cnet 866 4012 638 anyway you want to do it and by the way we have this is the sort of the sort of on on the song hero of twitter accounts you can follow us at scenic car tech i often forget to mention that in both of our shows or you can follow us individually i'm brian cooley like it sounds wayne is the unpronounceable way for knee that's another way we can say way for knee away foreign waveform that sounds dirty and a silent and every day each time we say it a different letter is silent next next week the w will be silent and Antoine is an QA NT g 00 we're all on twitter we have to be they'd fire us if we weren't and thanks we'll see you next week bye