SIRIUS Stiletto 2 Portable Satellite Radio with MP3 Player

I bought this item as a gift for my son. He loves it, gets all his sports news as it happens and can listen to his beloved football games as much as he pleases. The price was right, delivery prompt and would certainly buy from Amazon again.

First I bought the Stiletto 100 (from ebay without warranty). It lasted six months. Now I am on my third Stiletto 2 in a year and it is dead and unrecoverable. I got a service contract with it but every time I cash that in it cost me $20 plus another $15 to switch the signal to my new radio. I love Sirius, I love the service...but this portable sucks!

I cannot tell you how horrible a device these Stiletto 100 or 2's are. I believe I have had at least 8 shipped to me this past year 2008. Granted, all but one have been refurbs, but I went through at least 5 S-100's, one being new and that only lasted 7 months before it wouldn't receive the satellite signal anymore.

The refurbs were all bad right out of the box. I am convinced that no one actually refurbs any of these things, as I received a couple with settings of other owners still intact. All were broken in one way or another. Thankfully, I found a great customer service rep who switched all of my equipment over to an S2, but that did not go any better. It took 3 units before one worked, and that lasted only a few weeks before the playback files got scrambled and it could not play anything in order or even play what the file said. It played random files from whatever date and time and length it felt like and not even the same way twice, which when you are recording Howard Stern, is not a good thing. I record six hours Mon-Thu, in one hour increments, and cannot find the next file (part) anymore. The next unit worked a few extra weeks and I had just gotten confidence that it was a good one - emailing the rep and thanking her, when that very night (yesterday) it happened again - another scrambled brain. I cannot find what I want to hear - the file names do not match the contents. Another is soon going to be on its way. Oh, the pain.

I love to hate this thing. When it works, I love it, but that isn't very much time - the rest of the time, I despise it and Sirius should be ashamed of itself for inflicting these things on its loyal (lifetime) customers - they are a true piece of CRAP. If I had paid full price, I would be even madder, but I got the first one for only $150 and even at that price, they aren't worth the aggravation. I can only hope to get lucky this next time, but I Siriusly doubt it can happen. On the bright side, at this rate, the warranty will likely never expire because I cannot get one to last anything close to a year. I suppose that is an upside, albeit a small one, a very small one. If you buy one, you had better have a ton of patience or develop it very, very quickly.

The Stiletto 2 continues to bring me joy. Daily, I am impressed with its capabilities. Not sure what happened to the other reviewers with negative comments - I have had no incidents with the unit. WiFi is incredible. Recording assets are on par with most MP3 players. Only cons: Slightly buggy at times (exercise patience and you are listening again in 1 minute). Sirius needs to update software for Mac usage. Buy this and your music listening experience will never be the same! This is my third Sirius radio (2 Sportsters, now the Stiletto - not sure how Sirius can top this).

Within one hour of receiving the product, while I was on the phone with Sirius to get it activated, the volume button broke off while I was having to take out and re-insert the battery. I should have known that if one hour into my experience I was having to do a battery removal, this was not going to be a good product.

Now, less than a month after receiving it, it's just flat not working. It apparently has a signal (shows 2 bars) but will not play Sirius radio nor items from my recorded library. This has been a terrible experience.