Ever since getting my 2025 E450 I've been searching for an ideal solution to using a USB thumb drive for music in the car that doesn't stick out far and won't break off from accidentally getting bumped all the time. In my W212, it had a regular USB-A port and finding a low profile such as the was easy and it worked great. It stuck out at most 5mm which was just enough to get your fingers around it to pull it out. In fact, it was sometimes hard to get a good hold of. In the new W214 it has only USB-C ports making me have to look for another solution. I prefer to use a USB drive to play music in my car rather than any other method. In the W212, my options were Bluetooth from phone, CD, and USB. I have a decent CD collection that I've taken time to rip (backup) as MP3 so I can listen to my music on my phone, car, and motorcycle. With the fantastic Burmester 4D sound system, I've upped my game and decided to rip all of my CDs again as FLAC files which take up a much more space but with the larger thumb drives available today in 256GB, 512GB, and even 1TB, that is not an issue any longer. For my needs, 256GB is actually plenty for the size collection I have even with using FLAC format.

My first thought was to get a USB-C thumb drive that is low profile like the SanDisk Cruzer Fit. After much searching, I could not find any. There was one that looked promising (picture below) but the size maxed out at 64GB and the reviews are bad with some saying it failed early. I needed something at least 128GB and ideally 256GB for my USB music. In addition, I need another USB thumb drive for the dash-camera and wanted 512GB to allow for a longer record time before old footage got deleted. After failing to find any super low profile USB-C thumb drives that have those capacities, I turned to converting my tried and true SanDisk Cruzer Fit with a USB-C adapter. I settled on a 90° USB-C M to USB-A F adapter. This worked but because the adapter between A and C it was not as low profile as I would like. This made it still stick out a bit more than I hoped. Not satisified, I searched for another solution and found these and thought I would give them a try. They are made of aluminum and seem to be high quality. To go with these I got a which is not low profile but with an aluminum outer shell making them durable and a solid quality feel to them. This turned out to be the best solution so far and I decided to get a second set with a 512GB thumb drive of the same type for the dash camera. Both are in the center console USB ports and are nice and out of the way.

This is what they look like in the center console using the horizontal 90° adapter. They sit nice and flush, do not flex, and most importantly are not in the way when accessing items in the center console.


You can use the vertical 90° adapters. I like the horizontal better since they give less opportunity for something to catch on the thumb drives when accessing items in the console.


Hope this helps anyone looking for a similar solution. They work for me and are the best solution I have found so far. If there ever is a reliable high capacity low profile USB-C thumb drive that looks like the below, I may switch. For now, the above works well.

 

That is actually pretty clever.

 

I also use a thumb drive for music (128GB) and another thumb drive for my dashcam (512GB).
However I can not use voice to select music tracks when the camera is recording

any suggestions? Thanks!

 

On my W213 I use an SD to mSD adapter. It esssentially flush; nothing will snag on it. I have a couple of thousand music and video files on it including playlists. They can be selected from the menu. I've never tried voice. I also have SanDisk USB to mSD adapter that sticls out about ½".

 

I don't have any issues with selecting music with voice control when the dash camera is recording. I would need more info on what you are doing and what the car is doing in response to help you.

 

If you have any SD slot like my W212 had, that's a good option. The W214 does not have one so you have to use one of the USB-C ports. That's why I posted this in the W214 board.

 

Wolf, great suggestion. i ordered the adapters and duplicated your setup. My W213 had the SD card slot, but like many other things Mercedes stop included it.

 

Awesome! Let me know how it works out and what you think after trying them.

 

They work perfectly. I am in the process of putting all of my CD's on to my media server (Synology) at the highest quality format you mentioned. Then i can transfer the CD's to a USB drive. This is a timely process as you know. Prior to this I simple copied the music files from an iPod, but the quality is not great.

 

It is a time consuming process, but worth it. I use Synology as well. Great device!

 

Years ago I ripped about 1,000 of my favorite CDs to lossless FLAC using VLC to my Windows Server 2008. It took a whole weekend. I have my collection on a mSD in the car playing random selections. I never regretted it. It is easy to add new music by copying it to my music folder. Make sure to copy album art to the album folder along with the music. Mercedes will display the album art when the music is playing.