Music's great, innit? We've already established that technology is responsible for broadening your music taste, and now, thanks to internet radio, there's even more of it going on. This radio gives you access to over 10,000 radio stations so you can try our Bavarian pipe music, before actually committing to The Best of Bavarian Pipe Music '07.
Let's start from the beginning: this radio docks iPods, so you can listen to your own personal choons. It works with everything from the Nano forward. There's also an FM tuner, for your basic, static-filled stations. As if that wasn't enough, you'll also find a USB port, should you have one of those crazy USB MP3 players. You can even stream music from your hard drive. But the fun really starts with the internet radio.
Connecting it to the internet is either a case of connecting it to your computer via an ethernet cable (annoyingly not supplied), or using your wireless network. Considering how complicated the process could be, it's actually surprisingly easy. The remote is used to select the network, as well as enter the security code. From there, it takes about 5 minutes for the radio to collect the vast number of radio stations out there.
Inevitably, finding the station you want can be a hassle. They're arranged by genre, music type, new stations, popular stations and alphabetically. You can also enter the name via the remote to find a specific station. In another attempt to make the process easier, the remote is equipped with a 'smiley face' button, which you can press to add a station you're listening to to your favourite list.
Podcasts can be slightly more difficult to navigate. They're all stored on a 'listen again' basis, so you get a good back catalogue of most podcasts. The problem is that the menu can only display 50 options per screen. For instance, if you wanted to find a UK podcast beginning with 'T' you'd have to select 'More podcasts' after the first 50 (which could still be casts beginning with 'A') and 'More podcasts' again and again until you reach the screen displaying the 'T' podcasts. Since the menu takes a few seconds each time to refresh and populate, it can be a boring process.
Internet radio depends on your wireless signal, and whilst mine was relatively strong, there was one occasion where it was lost and I had to rescan all the stations in.
In terms of build, this thing is not small. Nor is it light. The bottom half is actually the 2.1 speaker set, whilst the top houses all the clever tech. Bizarrely, they've put a volume knob on the back, as well as bass and treble adjusters. This means you can control volume manually through the radio, manually through the iPod or via the remote - overkill.
Overall, it's a fantastic gadget, and importantly, easy to use. In fact, the manual was one of the best I've ever read for simplicity. The only sticking point would be the price - £250.
Product page: Amazon
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