To give you some frames of reference we came to the Sensia while messing with Logitech's Squeezebox Radio – which uses its big knob to navigate lists and menus – and we have a touchscreen O2 Joggler in the kitchen, which we use pretty much every day.
The available apps are somewhat limited
Whereas scrolling through content on the Logitech is swift and satisfying, the Sensia proved stodgy and slow with swipes simply not translating into the hope for fast and fluid on-screen reactions. On some occasions, swiping up a station list would register the first and last touch, but not the intervening swipe motion, thus necessitating a repeat performance.
Problems are exacerbated by some of the icons and buttons on the Sensia's screen, these being just a bit too small for easy arms length use. The Joggler's system of larger, well-spaced icons and touch/drag menu bars may not look as swish as the Sensia's UI, but it works better in the real world. Put the Sensia on a desk directly in front of you and things are easier, but this isn't a phone - you shouldn't have to pick it up or go nose-to-nose to use it.
Swiping through long lists also suffers from the system not shifting to an accelerated letter-by-letter search when you swipe repeatedly. When flicking up and down long lists the Sensia is a also bit too skittish for our likes, taking a noticeable amount time to work out where it is and in what order its supposed to list stuff.
Once content had been located activation taps often have to be made twice and sometimes three times before anything actually happens even though the screen clearly showed the first touch registering. The remote control – another lovely bit of design, it must be said – only manages the volume, pause/play/next/last track, source and power so you can't use it to cut down on the time spent prodding the screen. Incidentally, the on-screen volume control works perfectly.
Album art is displayed... on good days
Strangely, for a device with such a large screen, the Sensia can't play video. We are used to streaming video from a PC to our Joggler and hoped to be able to do the same with the Sensia but without the need for external speakers. Such a shortcoming seems a waste of the Sensia's large and colourful display.
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
