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Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program Update: It appears this unit has been revised to include wireless N which was not available in 2010 when I received my device.
This wireless internet radio has far surpassed my expectations. It has so many features that I cannot imagine what the more expensive units can do. There are several well written reviews that go into considerable detail already posted. So I thought that I would comment on the more negative reviews instead.
A couple of reviews mention static background noise. I own a new pair of Bose QC 15 $300 headphones and I plugged it into the headphone jack to listen carefully for static. I even turned up the treble to enhance static if it were present. There was absolutely no static, zilch. I listened during the quiet moments between music on numerous stations and modes. The sound is very clean and pure. I am a career electrical engineer and home theater is my passion. So I can say that with the unit I received, the sound quality is extremely good. It even offers numerous equalization settings. I am indeed impressed. I turned up the volume control to maximum to determine if I could detect any distortion. The sound seemed just as clean as it was at lower volume no hiss, static or distortion that I could detect.
Some mention weak wireless reception. I own a two story 3400 sq. ft. home so I went diagonally to the opposite side of the house and on a different floor. I could not tell any difference in operation. I have a Black & Decker DC to AC converter with an internal battery. So I walked around the house to determine if the wireless connection dropped out of service. Again, it worked fine as I walked around inside the house and even into the front and back yard. This test may have more to do with the network wireless router, but both ends need to perform. I have a three year old Netgear wireless G router plugged into one of the ports of DLink Wireless N router. I did not want to degrade my wireless N network by connecting it to this wireless G internet radio. And that brings up a point I do not like so much. I wish there was a wired connection available. But they chose to be wireless only and wireless G at that. People with wireless N will not be happy to drop their entire network speed down to wireless G just for the sake of having an internet radio.
I tested power interruption as well. I set the internet radio to a FM station and pulled the AC plug from the wall to turn it off. I plugged the AC adapter back into the wall outlet to see if it would remember the station I had selected. After less than a minute, it had regained the wireless connection and started playing the same radio station I had selected prior to power down. So that worked well I thought. So I decided to test the range of the remote control. It worked reliably up to 35 feet. The test was across one room, down the hallway to the opposite corner of another bedroom. There was only a very narrow field of view and it still worked quite well. It will probably work at a greater distance if it weren't as obstructed as my test case was.
The built-in clock radio works quite well. I chose the central time zone with automatic daylight savings time setting. The time was set automatically via the internet. The sleep timer works well. The alarm clock time setting was easy and intuitive. In fact, everything is very intuitive. I have not even looked at the manual yet. When I set up the wireless G router, I did not create a password, but I will later. I plugged in the internet radio and it set itself up without any intervention. It just worked. The most difficult setup effort was finding my old wireless G router and setting it up again. The wireless radio setup was for the most part automatic. I checked for a firmware update, but my unit was already at the latest revision. The firmware update is very easy to do.
I do not plan to subscribe to Sirius Internet Radio because I only plan to use the free stations. And there are so many stations available that it is mind boggling. It will take a while to learn all the functions available on this unit. I think it is very attractive with a high polish black color. The display is very good and readable. You can adjust the backlighting to whatever you prefer. Power consumption seems to be only 2.5 Watts using my Kill-A-Watt digital power meter. The back of the unit feels slightly warm after it has been on for a few hours. I measured the temperature and it was only 10 degrees F above ambient room temperature.
I tried not to repeat what others have already written. You can read those reviews to get a very good idea of functionality.
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