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Published July 31, 2026. Updated September 8, 2026.
If you want an aftermarket head-up display that still works in five years, buy the one that needs no app and no engine link. That’s the VJOYCAR C80, a GPS-only unit Tom’s Guide tested at $30. The unit most roundups still name first, the HUDWAY Drive, is listed as out of stock on HUDWAY’s own store. So is its sibling, the Drive Lite. Everything else in this category is a bet on a small company staying interested in it. This week, that bet looks worse than it did a year ago.
I’ve driven older trucks and farm vehicles long enough to trust hardware over an app. A gadget that depends on a phone app is only as reliable as the company behind it. That’s the lens I bring to the picks below, especially the one that needs no app at all.
Jump to the part you need: the stock check, the app clock, three-year costs, the federal study, the GPS-only pick. Or skip to the OBD2 pick, the reflector, what to avoid, EVs, or what I could not confirm.
What Every Maker’s Own Store Said This Week
Which Aftermarket Head-Up Displays Are Still In Stock?
I started this update the boring way, by opening each product’s page on the site of the company that makes it. That is not usually the interesting part of a roundup. Here it was the whole story. Four of the units that current published roundups still recommend are not sellable from the people who built them. And one of them has quietly left its maker’s catalogue altogether.
| Unit | Where you still see it recommended | What its maker’s own page says (Aug 30, 2026) | What has to keep existing for it to work |
|---|---|---|---|
| HUDWAY Drive | Top pick on Tom’s Guide’s head-up display list, at $279 | “Out of stock / contact support@hudway.co” | HUDWAY’s app, plus the bundled Bluetooth OBD-II dongle |
| HUDWAY Drive Lite | Sold beside the Drive on the same store | “Out of stock / contact support@hudway.co” | Same as the Drive |
| HUDWAY Glass | Widely listed at $49.99 | HUDWAY’s page still links to Amazon; Best Buy shows it “no longer available in new condition” | Your phone and any maps app |
| Pyle PHUD18OBD | Tom’s Guide’s list, where the model is written PHUD180BD | “Sold out” at $85.59, marked down from $122.27 | Your car’s OBD2 port |
| wiiyii C1 | The unit Tom’s Guide tested, at $56 | Not on wiiyii.org, which now shows the C5 and the P6 | Your car’s OBD2 port |
| wiiyii C5 | wiiyii’s own best seller | Listed and promoted; no price published | Your car’s OBD2 port |
| VJOYCAR C80 | Tom’s Guide review at $30 | Listed on VJOYCAR’s site; no price published | GPS satellites and a 5V USB socket |
| Garmin HUD and HUD+ | Older guides that were never revised | Discontinued | An app Garmin pulled from the store |
What Do These Stock Results Mean for Buyers?
These stock results point to two practical problems. The first is practical: if you order a HUDWAY Drive, you are buying from a marketplace reseller holding old stock. That reseller can charge whatever it wants, with no maker inventory behind a warranty claim. The second is worth sitting with. Read the right-hand column: almost every unit depends on something outside the box that somebody has to keep running.
The App Is the Part That Goes First
This category has already run the experiment once. Garmin sold a HUD and a HUD+ that projected navigation from a phone. It discontinued them and pulled the companion app from the Play Store. Hackaday documented what that felt like from the owner’s side in October 2022. He had a working piece of hardware, a new phone, and no software left anywhere that could talk to it. The owner in that write-up rebuilt the thing around an ESP32 and a GPS module to get his display back. Its glass, housing and display were all fine. The app was the part that expired.
What Do HUDWAY’s Own Numbers Show?
The real question for any of these is who has to stay in business. It has to keep running long enough for this to still work as a head-up display in 2029. For the phone-based route, that’s HUDWAY LLC, and HUDWAY’s own numbers are worth knowing before you commit. HUDWAY Go sits at version 6.0.3 on Apple’s App Store, updated 12/28/2024, rated 3.2 stars across 510 ratings. Twenty months without a release isn’t proof of anything on its own. Paired with two out-of-stock hardware pages on the company’s own store, that stops looking like a quiet patch. It starts looking like a direction.
The in-app purchase list on that same App Store page is stranger still. As displayed on August 30, 2026, it lists one month of Premium at $9.99, three months at $8.99, six months at $7.99, one year at $4.99, one day at $0.99, and a lifetime unlock at $8.99. A lifetime unlock priced a dollar under one month isn’t how a company prices decade-long software. I could be reading that wrong, and HUDWAY hasn’t said anything about it publicly that I could find. So treat it as a signal, not a fact.
What Three Years of Each Route Costs
There are only three real ways to get a head-up readout in a car that didn’t come with one. They diverge on the clock rather than on the sticker. Below is what each costs on day one, each year after, and by the end of year three. The subscription figures use HUDWAY Go’s own listed prices. The hardware figures use the last price I could verify for each unit, marked where that price is a reseller’s rather than a maker’s.
| Route | Day one | Every year after | Total by the end of year three | What you are trusting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phone behind a HUDWAY Glass reflector, free maps app | $49.99 | $0 | $49.99 | Your phone, and any maps app you like |
| Same reflector, HUDWAY Go Premium billed monthly | $49.99 + $9.99 | $119.88 | $409.63 (36 x $9.99 = $359.64, plus $49.99) | HUDWAY still billing and still shipping the app |
| Same reflector, HUDWAY Go lifetime unlock | $49.99 + $8.99 | $0 | $58.98 | HUDWAY’s servers, for as long as they run |
| VJOYCAR C80, GPS only | $30 | $0 | $30 | GPS satellites and a 5V USB socket |
| wiiyii C5, OBD2 with GPS fallback | About $71.80 (reseller listing, not a maker price) | $0 | About $71.80 | Your car keeping a standard OBD2 port |
The gap between the second row and the third is $350.65, for the same reflector and the same app. That’s decided entirely by which button you press at checkout. That is the single largest number in this category, and it has nothing to do with any product’s specifications. If you go the phone route, take the lifetime unlock or use a free maps app and skip Premium.
What the Federal Study Found, and the Part Most Guides Get Backwards
This section describes driver-distraction research. It is not a safety claim about any product below. No head-up display substitutes for attentive driving or for your vehicle maker’s mounting instructions.
NHTSA published “Head-Up Displays and Distraction Potential” in January 2023, as report DOT HS 813 293. Its authors were Russell, Radlbeck, Atwood, Schaudt, and McLaughlin. Forty-eight drivers, half aged 20 to 35 and half aged 50 to 65, drove with three display types. A factory head-up display sat at a 4-degree look-down angle. A factory head-down dashboard screen sat at 29 degrees, and an aftermarket smartphone display sat at 14 degrees.
What Happened When Drivers Had a Task to Do?
Here is the part that gets summarized backwards in most coverage of this study. When drivers had a task on the display, they looked at the head-up display less than at the other two. That figure was 29.8 percent of the time, against 42 percent for both the head-down screen and the aftermarket unit. That is the result people quote. The result they skip comes from ordinary driving with no task at all. There, the head-up display drew 11.0 percent of drivers’ looking time. The head-down screen drew 5.8 percent, and the aftermarket display drew 7.8 percent. That’s roughly double the head-down figure, for nothing in particular. A display in your sightline is a display you glance at when you have no reason to.
And on the measure buyers care about most, the report is flat: “There were no differences in surprise event reaction times among the display tasks; focusing on the HUD was just as distracting as the other displays.” So a head-up display can shorten the trip your eyes make for information you asked for. But it also gives them somewhere new to wander the rest of the time. Buy one because you’re tired of the phone mount, not because it will save you from a deer.
The Aftermarket Head-Up Display Nothing Can Switch Off
After years of hauling trailers behind trucks that outlasted their own electronics, the VJOYCAR C80 is the one I’d point a friend to, since it runs on GPS alone. It’s the only unit here whose life doesn’t depend on a company, an app store, or an engine. That’s why Tom’s Guide’s review says it “should work with every recently made vehicle, including electric cars and trucks.” It shows speed, time, distance and altitude on a green-on-black screen. It takes 5V at 1A over USB with a 180cm adapter cable, per VJOYCAR’s own product page. Tom’s Guide tested it at $30 and found it readable in bright sunlight, a genuinely unusual result at that price.
Two things I would want to know first. The two sources disagree on the screen: Tom’s Guide calls it 4.3 inches, VJOYCAR’s own page says 4.5. Small, but it is the kind of thing that tells you how carefully a spec sheet was written. And Tom’s Guide notes the unit’s 2.3-inch height can obstruct the view ahead. It also notes that no accessory power adapter is included.
Skip this if you want engine data. There is no OBD2 connection, so no RPM, no coolant temperature, no fuel consumption, ever. Skip it too if a monochrome green readout would bother you every day for years.
The Aftermarket Head-Up Display Still on Its Maker’s Front Page
If you drive a gas car and want engine data on the glass, the wiiyii C5 is the pick. It’s mostly a pick by elimination. It reads OBD2 with a GPS fallback, and it’s the model wiiyii itself puts forward as its best seller. That last part matters more than it sounds. The C1 that Tom’s Guide tested is no longer on wiiyii’s site at all. Buying a model a maker has moved on from repeats the Garmin problem, just slower.
The honest weakness is price. wiiyii publishes none, so the C5 lives at marketplace prices that move. I found a new one listed at $71.80 on eBay on August 30, 2026, from a third-party seller with three in stock. The nearest independent test here is Tom’s Guide’s review of the C1 at $56 on a 2014 Audi A4 Allroad. Its complaints are structural rather than model-specific. “A big bump dislodged it,” the reviewer wrote of the adhesive dash mount, and the unit is “tall enough to obstruct the view ahead.” Neither of those is fixed by a newer model number.
Skip this if you drive an electric car, or anything built before OBD2 was standard. Skip it too if you want turn-by-turn directions. This family cannot link to a phone, so navigation is not on the menu at any price.The Reflector Route, If You Can Still Find the Glass
The HUDWAY Glass is not really a head-up display. It is a tinted, mirror-coated lens on a phone mount that bounces your phone’s screen up toward your eyeline. It has no power, no battery, and no electronics of its own. HUDWAY’s own page says it works best in the dark or rain, and warns that reflection fades on bright days. Digital Trends put it less gently. Their reviewer struggled to make out data on the screen at maximum phone brightness in daylight.
Its appeal is that it’s the only route here with no expiry date attached to somebody else’s software. Any maps app works. If HUDWAY closed tomorrow, a piece of coated plastic keeps reflecting. Availability is the catch. HUDWAY’s page still points at Amazon. Best Buy lists it at $49.99 but marks it no longer available in new condition. Check both before you count on it.
Skip this if you mostly drive in daylight. That is the whole use case it is bad at, and no amount of screen brightness fixes it.
The Aftermarket Head-Up Displays I Would Stop Recommending
The HUDWAY Drive is the clearest loser here, and it’s not because it’s a bad device. On paper, it’s the best one. It’s a standalone 1.8-inch screen that HUDWAY rates at 12,000 nits, measuring 7.3 by 6.3 by 4.0 inches. It ships with its own Bluetooth OBD-II scanner. Tom’s Guide still lists it at $279 as a top pick. But HUDWAY’s store says out of stock and gives you a support email address instead of a checkout. The Drive Lite says the same. And the app the Drive leans on for navigation last shipped a release in December 2024. Paying $279 through a reseller for a device whose maker isn’t holding stock is a poor trade. Its software is idle too, however good the panel is.
The Pyle PHUD18OBD reads sold out on Pyle’s own site at $85.59, down from $122.27. Worth noting for anyone chasing it: it carries a three-year warranty if you register within 30 days of purchase. That’s the best coverage term anyone in this roundup publishes, and it’s coverage you can’t buy right now. The wiiyii C1 is off wiiyii’s site. And the Garmin HUD and HUD+ turn up in older guides that were never revisited. They’re discontinued, and the app that drove them is gone. That’s the ending this whole page is about.
Why an Aftermarket Head-Up Display Goes Quiet in an Electric Car
No maker in this group explains this on the box, so here is the shape of it. OBD2 was built around engine and emissions diagnostics. An electric car has no engine, so its RPM, coolant temperature and fuel channels are either absent or non-standard. The device does what it was designed to do when it can’t find them: it drops back to GPS speed.
| Unit | Where its data comes from | What you get in an EV |
|---|---|---|
| HUDWAY Glass | Your phone’s screen, reflected | Everything it ever did. No vehicle data involved |
| VJOYCAR C80 | GPS only | Everything it ever did. Speed, time, distance, altitude |
| wiiyii C5 | OBD2, with GPS fallback | Speed only. Engine readouts go dark |
| HUDWAY Drive | Phone app plus a Bluetooth OBD-II dongle | Phone data only; HUDWAY sells a separate Tesla Edition that reads native vehicle data |
For an EV driver that narrows the field to two: the reflector and the GPS-only C80. It is not a defect in the OBD2 units so much as a mismatch, but the effect on your dashboard is the same either way.
What I Could Not Confirm About These Aftermarket Head-Up Displays
Nobody here has driven with any of these units. Every price, spec and quoted judgment above comes from a named source I read this week. Those sources are: each maker’s own product page, Tom’s Guide’s reviews of the C80 and the C1, Digital Trends on the Glass, Best Buy’s and Pyle’s own listings, Apple’s App Store page for HUDWAY Go, Hackaday’s write-up of the discontinued Garmin, and the NHTSA report itself. How we work on pages like this is set out on our editorial standards page.
Three gaps I would rather state than paper over. I could not find a published owner-review count for any of these units on a source I could verify directly. So there is no failure-rate table on this page, and I am not going to estimate one. I could not find a current United States retail price for the VJOYCAR V60. So it is left out of the roundup, rather than included with a converted or estimated figure. I found no recall in a check of U.S. consumer-product recall records for HUDWAY, VJOYCAR, wiiyii and Pyle. That’s worth stating plainly, because a clean check and an unperformed check look identical on the page.
One more thing is not a gap so much as a caution. Windshield and dash obstruction rules vary by state, and every unit here sits somewhere in your forward view. Check your local rules and the mounting guidance from your vehicle’s manufacturer before you stick anything down.
What Buyers Ask Before Mounting One
Does an aftermarket head-up display help you react faster to a hazard?
No. NHTSA’s January 2023 report, DOT HS 813 293, found no differences in surprise-event reaction times. That held across a factory head-up display, a factory head-down screen, and an aftermarket smartphone display. Treat a head-up display as a convenience feature, and follow your vehicle maker’s guidance on dash and windshield mounting.
Will one work on an electric car?
Only if it does not read OBD2 engine data. The GPS-only VJOYCAR C80 works on any recently made vehicle, including electric cars, per Tom’s Guide’s review. The HUDWAY Glass reflects your phone, so the car is irrelevant. OBD2 units such as the wiiyii C5 lose their engine readouts in an EV and fall back to GPS speed.
Is the HUDWAY Drive still for sale?
Not from HUDWAY. As of August 30, 2026, HUDWAY’s store lists both the Drive and the Drive Lite as out of stock. It points buyers at a support email address instead. Review roundups still price the Drive at $279, so check the maker’s own page before ordering from a marketplace reseller.
What happens to a head-up display when its app is discontinued?
It usually stops working. Garmin’s HUD and HUD+ were discontinued, and the companion app was pulled from the Play Store. That left owners with hardware that no current phone could talk to. A GPS-only unit avoids that risk because it has no app to lose.
Prices are approximate, current as of publication, and change frequently — confirm the latest price with the retailer before buying.
A head-up display is one piece of a dashboard. Our guide to the best wireless CarPlay adapters covers the phone-mirroring upgrade the reflector route pairs with, and our OBD2 scanner guide is where to go if engine data is what you were really after. For more in this space, browse our Smart Car Gadgets coverage.
