2008's top three radios
Digital sounds from DAB to the web
Kit of the Year The great DAB debate rages, but there's no doubt digital radios make great presents for regular listeners still tuning in to old trannies. Ahem. And these new fangled ones do FM and internet radio too.
Pure Digital Evoke Flow
Put simply, this is a great little radio. In terms of features and performance compared to price point, it's one the best we have seen for many a moon. It’s not very often that we get a product that really feels like big step forward, but this is one of those times. Everything is smooth with the Flow, the unit and its portal can do a lot, but you never feel like you are on a learning curve, all the thinking had been done for you, you simply need to choose what you want to listen to and how.
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Reg Rating 85%
Price £149
Revo Pico RadioStation
This is a great little all-round DAB/DAB+, Wi-Fi and FM radio which does nothing badly and everything to a high standard. The £170 price tag is on the right side of acceptable for the functions you get, and the product’s robust nature means you should get decent lifespan out of the Pico.
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Reg Rating 85%
Price £170 Find the best online price
Roberts solarDAB
One of the Register Hardware team took the radio to a festival this past summer and reported that the handy device provided enough chill-out sounds for a full three days and still had power on his return. If you listen to the radio to any great extent outside then this is a really useful little addition to any holiday, camping trip or day on the river bank.
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Reg Rating 85%
Price £80 Find the best online price
Best of the Rest
Pure Highway
85% Full review
Roberts Ecologic 1
80% Full review
Roberts Stream 202
75% Full review
Kit of the Year 2008
Touchscreen phones
Netbooks
MP3 players
COMMENTS
I like my DAB radio
For the person who wants to know why one might buy a DAB radio I can help - DAB radios receive stations that aren't available on FM. I listen a lot to the World Service on mine, and I feel deprived when I'm in my car, which has only FM.
I love mine.
I just bought a flow and its fab! Sound quality is pretty decent, the media streaming is superb , the Lounge makes adding extra stations really easy. I like being able to access all the web stations I normally listen to without having hear them through the tinny speakers on my laptop. Worth forking out extra for the rechargeable battery too. Oh and the DAB radio is pretty decent too.
A few minor quibbles. Setting the box on a wireless network took me a few goes until I figured out how to do lower case for the wpa passcode. If the web station you want isn't on the Lounge list then you have to be able to read html to figure out the correct url for some web stations. And I've not yet figured out if you can get it to remember where you got up to last time on the listen again stations.
Minor quibbles aside I'm happy to have forked out my hard earned cash for this as it gives me access to loads more radio stations, podcasts and listen again stuff that is not available through a transistor radio.
Ze promble here..
The thing I can't get my head around, and excuse me if this seems odd.. Why the feckin' hell would you pay that much for a kitchen radio? Let's just leave aside how horrible layer 2 audio at that bitrate sounds, and how disconcerting the time delay is due to DAB, and look at the fact that it's a small radio with small speakers. Paying that much for something that sounds crap seems like madness.
I'd much rather get a semi-decent FM radio of the same size for a lot less- since it's gonna sound as good, if not better. I guess there are a few stations not on FM, six music and the world service are ok if that's the sort of thing you like. Personally, I either listen to radio 4, or have my favorite streaming drum and bass station on..
..which brings me onto... Do a roundup of nice streaming boxes too- the sort that people can connect to their big hifi, like the squeezebox. They're becoming more mainstream, and I'm sure some folks wouldn't mind one for christmas..
For your next trick...
If I ask nicely, could you do a similar comparison of portable DAB radios- i.e. the little ones that run headphones? Would save me the effort of figuring out which ones are rechargeable etc.
Thanks
Tim#3
