Logitech Squeezebox Radio (Red)

I am a big internet radio fan. There is no variety to terrestrial radio these days, and the satellite radio works best in the car. Internet radio has opened up a whole new world to me, and even replaced my old shortwave. I have had other products before, but they were a lot more like computers than radios compared to this one. It worked pretty fast out of the box, although it saves time if you do a lot of the set-up on your computer rather than using the cumbersome and time-consuming knob on the radio itself. I use it mainly for internet radio, but Pandora, etc., all seems to stream well also over my wireless network anywhere in the house. The Radiotime site is a good resource to set up folders for favorites, etc. and I have lots of stations arranged in folders by category for easy access. The radio itself has only six pre-sets, and in my case that was not enough.

Like all new products, this one requires some patience, and I am not sure all my relatives (and my wife) who just want to turn on an appliance and forget about it, would like it, but, if you are into radio, this is a real sweet set up.

My main complaint, which others obviously share, is that the long promised battery pack took forever to come out, and, when it did, immediately sold out. I was looking forward to sitting on the deck with the radio this summer. I sure hope the battery is back in stock before then. Logitech deserves some bad marks for stringing us along on the battery issue.

This is my third internet radio device (2nd alarm clock), I will pass on all the praise regarding internet radio in general, I think they are just great. FM radio's days are counted...


Pros:
* Nice color screen
* Nice Looking design
* Headphone out
* Line In
* Wireless
* Preset button is nice
* Able to add apps (nothing special so far for most of them)
* Has potential with future upgrade
* Nice alarm setup
* Auto dim is nice
* Sound is not great but good for a radio/clock

Cons:
* Alarm rang in the middle of the night for no reasons
* Menu is not well organize (why is favorite in the middle and not at the top, why having to scroll always down for sleep instead of having a dedicated button)
* Can't connect directly to a NAS box, have to use their Squeezebox Server, which in turn run on a PC which means it need to be on! Why Why Why cant I just connect to my NAS box??? Please note that you install the software on certain linux based NAS box if you are technical enough.
* Pricey, especially that extra battery and remote is $$ extra
* Snooze is the big button in the middle by the end of the week your alarm clock will be at the end of you night stand
* 6 preset buttons is not much when you have thousands of internet radios to choose from they are quickly filled
* Have to approximately guess volume for alarm
* No RCA or digital audio out
* Connect to logitech site for setup and saving settings, privacy can be an issue, (for a swiss company!)
* Sometimes fails to connect to some internet radio
* No USB input
* I have not fully tested the SqueezeCenter, I did have it installed on my NAS box but it seems that the Radio wanted to downgrade Firmware when I switched to the server ,lost my preset when I did that and got them back when I switched back


Conclusion
I recommend the Radio clock, even thou it has been a lot more buggy and my other ones, it does present a lot more potentional. I hope they fix the alarm issue, I don't like being waking up in the middle of the night...
If you are really non-technical (by non-tech I mean never touch a computer), this might not be for you.

Wishlist
* Categorize favorites
* Plain access to NAS without install server app
* Able to configure the preset button to anything (ex a sleep button, direct access to favorites etc..)
* Able to move, set the order the menus choices are where it is appropriate

After XM jacked up my rates again, and started charging an artists fee for the honor of listening to their music, I started to look for something to replace Xm. This radio performs better than my XM. Since you can stream Pandora and others, and also stream the Itunes library from your computer you have a lot of options without the monthly fee. I connected it to my Bose music system via the headphone jack and was very happy with the sound. I will get the Squeeze box touch if it ever is released and then this will go to the bedroom. For the price you can't beat it. Set up was quick and easy. My Itunes songs loaded in minutes. Squeeze box has my gratitude, and will be getting more of my money.

I've only had the squeezebox for a couple of days but so far I love it. Love the ability to choose content while not in front of my computer and also being able to do more complex setup via the web interface. Easy setup, I can listen to my iTunes collection, Pandora, Slacker, internet radio, XM radio (just install a plugin), podcasts, great flexibility in alarms, have facebook pictures or feed scrolling on the screen, looks great. Better than I expected, love this little thing.

I bought the Squeezebox to replace an XM radio that I was getting poor reception on. The Squeezebox not only gets at least as many different types of music as the XM radio but is extremely easy to use. Setup was very easy. The radio found my wireless network and then it was just a matter of typing in my password. Once the radio connected, we found the NPR stations that we like to listen to. BTW, you get access to practically every NPR station in the country and then went through the Pandora subscription process and loaded the music options that we wanted to hear. This is not a $1,000 speaker system so don't expect great sound. The spoken shows are just fine but the quality on the music shows could be better.

Bottom line, this is a lot cheaper than the XM subscription; receives all of the news and music that we want; and is very easy to set up and use.