Ditch digital radio and go online
Price: £120
Manufacturer: Intempo
Pros: Easy to set up. Provides access to radio from around the world.
Cons: Sound quality is not great. Station quality varies widely.
Bottomline: The GX-01's price means it's a niche gadget but it's good at what it does
This is a digital radio with a difference – rather than picking up Dab broadcasts over the airwaves, it streams radio over the internet.
That means you need a broadband connection to use it – it can connect through a standard network cable or wirelessly. Setting up the GX-01 was a piece of cake – just turn it on, and if it's plugged into the network it connects automatically. We used the wireless capability, and it was surprisingly painless. Pressing 'Scan' picked up a list of networks, and we were then able to enter the key for ours.
That's slightly tricky because you have to use the dial on the front to select a letter, then press Select. We instinctively pressed the dial in to select a character, but this turned out to be the power switch, and we had to start again. Once we were used to that it was fine. The supplied remote control can also be used for this bit.
Once connected, it updated its list of stations and was able to connect fairly quickly to most of them.
Because almost all internet stations are private concerns, some won't be online when you try but we achieved a good success rate. Quality of broadcast, of course, depends on the station, but there's a good mix of music and talk stations out there. As for the UK, you can listen to BBC stations using the GX-01.
Sound quality is impressive when listening to internet radio but the device can also play files stored on a USB memory key (there's a socket at the front) and here it fell down a bit, sounding quite muffled and without much bass. Despite that, as a radio player the GX-01 works well. At £120, though, it might be more suited to hard-core radio-heads.
Price: £120
Manufacturer: Intempo
Pros: Easy to set up. Provides access to radio from around the world.
Cons: Sound quality is not great. Station quality varies widely.
Bottomline: The GX-01's price means it's a niche gadget but it's good at what it does
This is a digital radio with a difference – rather than picking up Dab broadcasts over the airwaves, it streams radio over the internet.
That means you need a broadband connection to use it – it can connect through a standard network cable or wirelessly. Setting up the GX-01 was a piece of cake – just turn it on, and if it's plugged into the network it connects automatically. We used the wireless capability, and it was surprisingly painless. Pressing 'Scan' picked up a list of networks, and we were then able to enter the key for ours.
That's slightly tricky because you have to use the dial on the front to select a letter, then press Select. We instinctively pressed the dial in to select a character, but this turned out to be the power switch, and we had to start again. Once we were used to that it was fine. The supplied remote control can also be used for this bit.
Once connected, it updated its list of stations and was able to connect fairly quickly to most of them.
Because almost all internet stations are private concerns, some won't be online when you try but we achieved a good success rate. Quality of broadcast, of course, depends on the station, but there's a good mix of music and talk stations out there. As for the UK, you can listen to BBC stations using the GX-01.
Sound quality is impressive when listening to internet radio but the device can also play files stored on a USB memory key (there's a socket at the front) and here it fell down a bit, sounding quite muffled and without much bass. Despite that, as a radio player the GX-01 works well. At £120, though, it might be more suited to hard-core radio-heads.
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