Home > Consumer Reviews > Belkin TuneStage Bluetooth Receiver and Transmitter Kit For iPod

I bought one of these and use it with a bluetooth dongle (gear4 blustream) on my Ipod Nano. I am impressed, excellent range, good sound quality and compatible with any a2dp product that I possess (mobile phones). The first unit was for the bedroom, I bought a second for the lounge. Friends have seen my set up and bought the same combination. They are sold for early generation Ipods as the dongle that comes with it is a different connection to the dockable nano, with this in mind traders often sell this unit as a clearence product. I paid £20 and £12 for my pair!

This has transformed my iPod from being something used for train/plane journeys, to driving my home music needs.

No more rummaging around for CDs, or I can simply sit at home with the iPod on "Shuffle" and have the best jukebox in the world endlessly playing from my home stereo.

Embarrasingly simple to set up and use, plus the sound quality appears to be more then acceptable.

The best gadget I've got (well, since I got my iPod, anyway).

I bought the tunestage originally to connect my NC10 laptop to the hifi without wires, however it seems windows XP doesn't directly support A2DP - the lastest bluetooth language for high quality audio. My girlfrinds windows VISTA machine however found its own drivers on the net and started working perfectly once paired using the 1111 code - fully wireless... Apparently XP drivers are available but I havn't followed this up yet. Belkin claim support is not provided for use with windows/XP so you have to take a bit of a chance if you want it to work - which is a shame or it would be a 5* cracking product.

The Tunestage itself does work perfecly as it is supplied with an adaptor for the ipod and this works well with my 4G unit but beware as it uses the power output next to the audio jack which is different on later ipod models I think. The ipod battery time is reduced by using the bluetooth, but I don't think it is too severe. The Audio quality is as if plugged straight in - far far better than the FM transmitters.

Hope this is useful

Got this product, was a little disappointed that it was for old ipods without the docking point on the bottom. It's for the ipods with a connection near the headphone socket. My fault, I should have known my ipod video wasn't that generation. So I bought a Bluenext bluetooth adapter for the ipod. This item pairs with any bluetooth with pin codes 0000 1234 7777 8888. So far so good.... but oh no the Reciever only docks with 1111, as proven by my mobile phone. The sound is good as any mp3 source can be. Maybe as good as a hard wired ipod dock. I think that I will pair the kitchen pc with the kitchen stereo and buy a clarion car stereo for the missus that will pair with the blue next dongle as the car stereo is only twice the price of a sony dongle. So not a complete disaster, but heed the warnings of the incompatibility of the bluenext dongle and this ipod reciever.
BlueNext Bluetooth Stereo Adaptor Silver For Apple iPod and iPhone
Bluetooth Stereo Adaptor Black For Apple iPod and iPhone
The above are not compatible with this product, otherwise this item would have got 5 stars.

I decided to go for this based on cost alone, I don't have an ipod but having read some of the other info on the net it suggested that this will work with other Bluetooth equipment.

I have paired up the base with my N95, LG Viewty, and two other Nokia phones, they paired up using (1111) OK and connected but no sound comes out of the unit. This will not pair up with phones that I have tried.

It will also not pair up with Windows XP without specialist drivers as A2DP is not supported in XP, I tried specialist drivers by Bluesoler which connected to the Tunestage and shown that data was being transmitted but no audio was played by the unit. The good news is that with Vista it paired up and work perfectly.

It's a shame that Belkin didn't do a better implementation of the receiver as this could have hit a much larger market than just the ipod, I think they missed an oportunity here!

All in all it shows some promise if you have a Vista PC and Bluetooth and don't want wires. Don't get it if you want to pair it with a phone, the phones will pair and connect but you will get no audio.

There is also a version 2 of the Tunestage, that may be better at pairing to phones but I doubt it.

Hope this helps.