Sangean WFR-20 WiFi Internet Radio & Media Player by Sangean
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Digital camera reviews of Sangean WFR-20 WiFi Internet Radio & Media Player
Digital camera Review: Great self-contained tabletop internet radio
Summary: 4 Stars
Sangean WFR-20 WiFi Internet Radio & Media PlayerI purchased mine a month ago and have been well pleased. For certain genres and "one of a kind" unique radio stations you won't find OTA with a terrestrial radio from any market, it is a must if music is your thing.Digital camera Review: Great sound
Summary: 4 Stars
This radio has great sound, was easy to hook-up, cannot get every radio station in the world that is streaming, depends on the company that is doing the streaming, Reciva controls the list of stations, you can ask for a station to be added, but they decide who gets on the list. I like to listen to talk radio, (mostly AM stations) and love the lack of interference problems associated with AM radio.Digital camera Review: Interesting Shortwave Alternative, Poor User Interface
Summary: 4 Stars
I bought this radio after returning a Bose Wave Radio II that had iffy AM reception. The quality of sound is comparable to the Bose - which is to say it is very good. Deep bass, decent highs.
But the interesting thing about this product is how it changes the paradigm of radio listening. It is transformational to all of sudden have high-fidelity access to 1000 times as many stations (literally - I do not think I am exaggerating) than you would with a traditional radio. Any radio station out there that streams its content over the web can probably be received by this radio. It is a sort of shortwave radio on steroids.
The technology is not faultless. You can access stations by location or genre, and up to 12 can be stored in presets. Once a station is selected, the audio does not come in instantaneously - it takes a while to 'buffer' the stream in. In some cases, if the radio's database has an incorrect URL for the station or the station itself is having issues, you do not hear anything.
Sangean uses a service called Reciva to access station information. You can create an account at the reciva website and register your Sangean radio there. Once you do that, any stations you bookmark in the 'My Stations' section of [...] automatically show up in the 'My Stations' menu in the radio. Very cool. If a station does not work, you can report it in reciva.com to have them fix the URL (though the response time in my case so far has been very slow).
The radio also supports streaming content from a PC - Mac or Windows. It ca do this by accessing a windows share or by UPNP server. Setting up the Windows share is a pain - mostly thanks to the design of Windows - but setting up a UPNP server is very easy and teh radio picks it up quickly. I went with Allegro Media Server - a $39.95 piece of software that published your itunes library as UPNP server. You can also do this for free using Windows Media Player 11 - I did not try that because I wanted access to my Mac's library running OS X.
The remote control is small with poor tactile feel, but I quickly programmed my universal remote to control the radio by learning the commands, so this was not an issue for me. The radio can be used without the remote (which is more than I can say for the Bose Wave Radio II), as Sangean implemented a very intuitive user interface with only one knob, but the remote is a huge help.
Overall highly recommended.
UPDATE:
After working with this unit for a few months, I have to downgrade it to three stars. Teh reasons:
1. The Reciva website - which basically drives what you can and cannot receive, is non-responsive when broken URL links (stations that do not work with the radio) are reported. Tens of emails go unanswered.
2. Reception of stations that do work is a crapshoot. Some come on reasonably fast, others take very long or stay in the "Retrying" stage permanently.
3. The user interface is painful. One button to do everything if you are not using the remote - and it is sow to respond if it needs to talk to the Reciva website first. Not ideal. The remote makes things a bit better, but not by much.
Note that I do not have a regular DSL or Cable connection - I am subscribed to Roadrunner Extreme - which is faster than normal broadband connections and provides a confirmed 4.6 Mbps download. I shudder to think what the performance would be with a slower connection!
Overall: Partially recommended - not sure there better alternatives in internet radios out there. The sound quality is excellent when it does connect.
Digital camera Review: Lots of good features
Summary: 3 Stars
The Sangean WFR-20 is nicely designed, easy to set up and simple to use. However, there are problems. I am not able to tell if the problems are in the radio itself or in the Reciva software which acts as the operating system. It is frequently difficult to connect to a particular station, and it is not a bit unusual to lose the connection once you have it. So while the stations are crystal clear, they cut out and have to rebuffer to come back on line. Sometimes they cut out and won't come back on line at all. Several times I have had to unplug the unit from the electrical source in order to reset it, because it pretty much stops working altogether. I imagine all of these problems will eventually be ironed out, but they are frustrating now.Digital camera Review: Make sure you have adequate bandwidth
Summary: 4 Stars
I live in a place with almost no regular AM reception and just one FM station so an internet radio or a computer are necessary for multiple radio station reception.
The Sangean was easy to set up and works well, for the most part. The Reciva system works fine but finding stations could be easier. Being able to listen to audio streams from around the world is fun and, I expect, much better and simpler than, say, a ham radio.
One problem is that my internet connection, a satellite, limits me to 17 gigahertz of download use. There are no DSL or Cable connections here. The radio has to be used judicially, (there is a sleep timer), or my connection is slowed by the provider when I apprach 17G. Don't try to run one of these on a data card with just 5 gigahertz of download use!