Logitech Squeezebox Radio brings a world of music—free Internet radio, subscription services, or your personal digital music collection—to any space in your home, over your Wi-Fi network.
read more..Nice Features- Listen to infinite music, news and sports from every corner of the globe with this
easy-to-use, all-in-one Wi-Fi music player--all without a computer - Start listening to free Internet radio stations, online music services, and your personal iTunes collection in minutes--connects easily to your home network via Wi-Fi
- Bring full, high-quality sound to any room with an ultra-compact design that fits easily on your night table or kitchen counter
- Just turn the dial to browse radio stations, music tracks and even album art, displayed on the full-color screen
- Recommend music to Facebook friends instantly right from your Squeezebox
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Great Radio for Non-Techies, Pandora users, and expanding your musical and talk radio horizons by Jeff A. Stucker
I bought this Internet radio for my wife, who is a non-techie. She loves it, and uses it for all the reasons I bought it. The sound quality is surprisingly good for such a small radio. The bass is as good you can expect for something its size, but mid and high tone is clear as day and makes for great background music and radio shows.
Here's why I got it:
* Pandora
* Radio show archives (talk programs, radio dramas, etc.)
* To play podcasts and stories
* All kinds of radio stations by genre, location, and format from all over the world
* All the local radio stations that don't get good reception at our house (this was a bonus, I didn't actually expect this one, but it's got every local radio station on a list, including those out of range now loud and clear over the Internet)
For those who don't know about Pandora, it's a web site where you create your own Internet radio stations using music you like. I'm a Pandora junkie, and I made a bunch of stations my wife likes too.
This device was a snap to hook up. I entered the password to our home wireless network and it was online and playing music.
This device has lots of options, mostly different possible sources of music, stations, and programs. Non-techies can ignore the details they're not interested in. What's nice is you just follow the instructions and it'll do what you want. Once it's set up, whether wired to the Internet or through your wireless router, you don't need a manual, the knobs and buttons just make sense.
Out of the box, the menu navigation is simple, with options for all kinds of radio stations by Genre and format (i.e., talk). There are thousands of stations and programs to choose from, organized by several categories. It figured out my location and (surprise!) all the local radio stations show up on a Local list.
We like to listen to programs like Insight For Living, Focus on the Family, etc., but don't get good reception on the regular radio; besides, their programs may not match our schedule. No problem, she selects Talk > Religious > Shows > [Program Name] > Recent Episodes, pick the episode by title and listen to any of the last couple dozen shows whenever she wants. We can select radio dramas like Adventures In Odyssey for our children to listen to wonderful stories.
From there, I added more stuff. I created a MySqueezeBox account (which is free) using my computer and added a Pandora app (also free). I entered the passwords on the Squeezebox. The radio immediately was able to play my Pandora radio stations and Quick Mix. I added an RSS app to MySqueezeBox, and added a few podcasts, so we can listen to selected podcasts as well.
Here are some of the surprisingly pleasant features. The vibrant screen shows album art for each song on Pandora, the station logo for radio, or show logo for programs or podcasts. You can pause/mute at any time and skip songs on Pandora. The controls for menu navigation, pause, skip, and volume control are simple and straightforward.
On the down side, for Pandora users, it takes a couple of buttons and knob turns to enter a thumbs up or thumbs down on a song, which alters your station. It's much easier to edit the Pandora content on the computer. Entering passwords is tedious using a turn knob to select letters, numbers and special characters; fortunately, you only have to do it once for each password set up.
Once in the last month, it locked up and I needed to briefly unplug the device to reboot. (All the settings and passwords are still saved.) There is one podcast that I can't get to work because it's not formatted correctly for the radio to get it going; I really wanted Your Story Hour for my kids -- one of my favorites from childhood that I had in mind when I bought this thing -- but it won't work unless the podcast owner changes their site structure. Eventually, I may link this to my own music collection and downloads, which will definitely work around that podcast issue, but we've got so much more music and content available that for now we're fine.
By way of comparison, the built in thumbs up and thumbs down on the Livio Internet Radio Featuring Pandora (a competitive product) looked great but were not enough to make me or my wife want that instead. Reading up on the specs online, I found that the SqueezeBox has more flexibility and potential for future growth.
We like the idea of whole house audio, so here is something nice to have open for the future. If I buy another Squeezebox, like a boom box version or one that hooks into a "real" stereo system, I'll be able to "link" them wirelessly so they synchronize and play the same music from room to room.
For now, I'm feeling great about this gadget, and my wife likes it better than I expected; actually, she loves it. And the classic red color goes great with our decor! Other than the one podcast not working and one system lockup that was fixed with a power reset (unplug it briefly), the Squeezebox has worked flawlessly, adding music and inspiration to our lives. Literally.
Given the same decision, I'd buy this again in a heartbeat.
