Pure Sensia widget-running DAB radio
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Review As a rule DAB radios don't really blow the wind up our skirt here at Register Hardware, but when Pure announced its new Sensia back in September, we had a brief Marilyn Monroe moment.
Pure's Sensia: Sound idea?
With a 5.7in 640 x 480 capacitive glass touchscreen, social networking apps, DAB/DAB+, RDS FM and Internet radio and wireless UPnP media streaming this self-styled 'radio for the Facebook generation' promised to be of rather more interest than the norm.
At a glance, the Sensia is, indeed, highly impressive. About the same size and shape as a rugby ball – or 166 x 280 x 180mm – and weighing a not inconsiderable 1.9kg, the Sensia is a beautiful looking bit of kit and feels equally well bolted together.
To prevent it rolling away the Sensia sits on a plastic base, which also lets you rotate the unit through about 45° for the ideal viewing and touching angle. Round the back you will find a 3.5mm audio input for plugging in an MP3 player, a headphone jack and a mini USB port for updates and Pure's optional i-10 iPod dock.
So far so good, but plug the Sensia in and switch it on and sadly things start to go down hill. To begin with using the touch screen to navigate about the system and especially to search and select radio stations, artists or albums is nowhere near as pleasant or easy an experience as it should be.
Alas, docked iPods can't be controlled by the remote
It’s not the screen menu design that is at fault. The basic three-box layout with a row of icons at the bottom is sound enough too. Nor is it the capacitive screen itself, which seems to register taps and swipes well enough. No, the problem is that everything reacts just a little too hesitantly and haphazardly, suggesting either the firmware is a work in progress or that the operating system lacks the grunt for the job in hand – or a combination of the two.
COMMENTS
A fair sized chunk of cash
And not exactly silf like in size.
One possibility you review missed is the obvious.
Too slow a processor.
What if it simply hasn't got the grunt to do video or read the screen fast enough.
Perhaps the next version.
Please read a little wider...
@ Alan Brown
While DAB may have it's issues and while this unit may not be perfect, the reader would do with being aware of a few details
Like it or lump it, over 10million sets sold in the UK "so in any statistical answer "no"" is just plain wrong and ill-informed. I suspect even more will be sold at Christmas.
DAB and DAB+ (which this unit implements) is in regular use in Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland as well as the UK.
It's being trailed in Brunei Darussalam, Czech Republic, France, Ghana, Hong Kong, Hungary India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Taiwan, Republic of China, Turkey and Vietnam.
Hence, this is hardly a UK only product.
Horrible horrible experience
I saw one of these recently in a local John Lewis. I actually walked over to it because it looked so interesting. After a moment playing with it I walked off with the impression that it was a pile of shit. There must be something seriously wrong with their business of it allows products this bad to actually make it to market in this state. I counted 8 seconds from me activating a text input area to the on screen keyboard showing up. Then another few seconds before it accepted input. The flick-scrolling is a joke. There was plenty of "I want to scroll this content but I'll just hold my finger down and make tiny movements until I've 'grabbed' the content" after which you may as well toss a coin to see if the scroll will actually happen, although you probably don't have any coins left because you wasted them on an unusable radio with pre-alpha firmware.
This reminded me a lot of the nokia n800. Great idea, but a UI that just doesn't give the user what they want. If you have an iPhone you know what works and what doesn't.
ugly
it certainly touches the senses. man that is one fucking ugly piece of kit but than its exactly the kind of thing that some twat who twits would buy
Who designed this?
Absolutely hideous design.
For the same price you could buy a netbook and run widgets.. or anything else you wanted, and use online streaming which is no doubt superior to DAB. I can't even see the point
