Pure Digital Evoke Flow internet radio
Pure entertainment pleasure
Review After two years in development, Pure Digital has created what it hopes will become internet radio’s first genuinely iconic product.
Our first reaction was that this is a really attractive little radio. The company has kept the familiar Evoke casing, but coated the device in a gloss piano-black finish with stylish and solid-feeling metal controls and speaker grille.
Pure Digital's Evoke Flow: internet radio’s first genuinely iconic product?
There are touch-sensitive buttons on the front that are used for a number of different functions, and we found these to be easy to use and reliable. That's not the case for many touch-sensitive interfaces, often on much more expensive products.
The Evoke Flow combines DAB, FM and Wi-Fi-received internet streams and has the aim of delivering the best of what's available on all three platforms. Pure believes that just giving access to the thousands of internet stations that are out there isn't quite the point.
So it's created a dedicated portal called the Lounge, bringing the listener many ways to tailor the internet radio to suite personal tastes. There's no need trawl through hundreds of options to find something worth listening to - the search power of the Lounge can be applied to sort, arrange and create a bespoke listening experience. The site isn't available to the public as yet, but Register Hardware was given special access to try the service out.
COMMENTS
MonoPhonic
I'm with the last poster...
It Is a New Device, Whats with making it look like a 40's or 50's radio?
And at that price it better be at least stereo, by itself.
Modern streams are at least stereo, and a surround chip is a couple of dollars each. I can understand the uni-bars for tvs,
that have left, center, and right all in one. But,
A Monophonic Radio (of any quality or source),
will never be on my list of purchases.
Probably sell a crap-load to the "Bose" crowd,
or those that wonder...
"why a sound system HAS to have ALL those speakers?
DUH!
Bill...(with his HALO...[PUN INTENDED])
Because it is really his surround sound.
Naff
Why is it that so many Digital Radios look so unbelievably naff?
They're new, they're modern for f*ck's sake!
So many of them look like so much cheap old-style reproduction tat.
Give me one that looks like a modern device any day and I might be temped to get one.
Re: )))Stereo(((
Showing my age, but as someone who spent years of frustration waiting for Radio 1 to get their own FM stereo slot (rather than being given a few hours Radio 2s), and having to put up with all the best music being in horrid AM mono, I'd never consider buying any form of radio that wasn't stereo.
Unanswered question
The review leaves a big question unanswered.
Will it only play mp* style streams, or will it do real audio too?
If you can't use it for BBC 'listen again' it isn't an internet radio!
Specs are here...
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60896&PageType=Specification&Category=
Using the internet, I clicked on the link to the website and then the Specs tag and OMG YSRLY I found the specs. I think they were left out of the interview because, erm, it was easy to find 'em?
Looks like it answers most of the questions above
- it's DAB now, upgradeable to DAB+ later
- no ethernet, totally wireless (boo!)
- no RCA connectors (just headphone\stereo out\additional speaker out)
- can set up 30 'presets' on the faceplate (30 DAB, FM, Unlimited internet favourites limited to 10 until you use lounge) I'm guessing that it comes with access to things like a 'main directory' but the Lounge is the *real* way to set things up. Not too sure about this, but hey, it's an 'always on wireless device' so I guess it'll work...
- It can be set to WEP\WPA\WPA2 - but we'll have to wait until it's launched to see how easy
- Stereo - can buy an extra speaker (rip off!) to make stereo. For 30 quid? Whoops, that's a bit of a crapthing.
- It's so fecking expensive because we're in the UK and it's for geeks with money to burn. And it looks prettier than the Netgear MP101 ;) Although so saying, I'm not retireing my Airtunes\Airfoil plug just yet. But I may well do so after I've seen this in action.
