What you need to know about cloud backup

Sound, Ergonomics and Extras

Although it's a humble mono system, it pumps out a decent room-filling sound from its 10W speaker. That's largely down to the deep bass reflex tube at the rear, looking ominously like an exhaust pipe. It does such a good job you might consider the output a little bass-heavy when placed against wall.

The Music centre has a dedicated power switch. The front panel power switch will activate the standby display - a fairly bright affair which can't be dimmed, with a large clock.

The very useful History list remembers your choices

It's one of the best outputs considering the price and output power on offer here. It's no match for, say, the 50W of bass and 50W of tweeters you'll find in Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin - but that's three times the price, and you get what you pay for. I was astonished, and chuffed, to find RCA and digital S-video outputs though.

Overall the sound is considerably better than the DAB kitchen top radio many of us have in the corner.

However, this is very much a 1.0 product, with the sort of rough edges one would expect to be improved in a version 2.0. The biggest culprit is the sluggish scrolling while streaming net radio, which should have been addressed in the lab, but it isn't a show stopper. Turn off the streaming, and it scrolls quickly or at an acceptable speed.

The media player features artwork

The discovery of net radio stations and podcasts is also very much 1.0-ish and could also have been improved. A little storage for podcasts would have helped, along with a few touches such as a backlit remote.

Cloud based data management

Next page: Net Gain?