Pure Sirocco 550 music combo

Flow charts

Launched last summer, Flow Songs is still patchy. Shazam is fine at matching pop music to its database but Pure’s follow-through is mixed, with many of the tracks I’d consider buying being unavailable for purchase on the platform. It’s also often undercut on price by Amazon’s MP3 store, although Flow Songs’ time-saving advantages might be worth the extra pennies.

Pure's Lounge had a makeover earlier this year and is all the better for it
Click for a larger image

The Lounge web portal has had a much needed revamp and includes a digital music store, so you can buy songs or albums from a conventional looking site (not just tracks tagged from the radio), stream them to compatible Pure radios or download the MP3s. Time will tell if it becomes a better proposition than Apple’s planned iCloud for iTunes.

Verdict

This multiplatform hi-fi encompasses almost every audio source that most people would want, but it could do with a service such as Spotify. Flow Songs isn’t the same kind of thing and you need to have bought each track rather have a rolling all-you-can-eat subscription. Although its USB playback choices are limited, the media streaming and internet radio features do go some way to compensate for this. Despite the sometimes tricky menus and the unexceptional (but optional) speakers, it’s a convenient and good value item. ®

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