By Leo Stiles
In the world of technology, it seems that there is nothing that cannot be improved by adding in some Wi-Fi. From TVs to internet-aware fridges, the amount of gadgets and household appliances that are becoming web connected is getting ridiculous. Happily, the Wi-Fi enhanced radio does not fall into this category.
Nearly all popular radio stations now broadcast over the internet, plus there are a plethora of web-only stations out there. Logitech are not the first to the market with an internet radio, nor are they first with a Wi-Fi enabled internet radio. They are however, the first to combine all this into a piece of kit that any music lover would be mad not to own, with features and services even Apple would envy.
The Squeezebox Radio is a simple-looking and functional system that looks no more striking than your average iPod dock. Sporting a colour LCD screen and a simple but well laid out set of control buttons, even those of you with sausage fingers will be able to manage to it without any trouble. The overall build is solid and while it doesn’t have the wow factor of its more upmarket competitors from Sony or JVC, it beats them all hands down as far as features are concerned.
The Squeezebox connects to the internet through an Ethernet cable at the rear of the unit or via your home broadband network’s Wi-fi. Once connected, the Squeezebox can pick up the web stream of your favourite radio station, from our national broadcasters to those from all over the world. Each station can be bookmarked much like any website and the ldecent-sized LCD screen on the front of the unit makes navigation easy, while also providing additional information like station and programme name, the name of the track that’s playing and, sometimes, more in-depth information such as band discography and trivia.
The Squeezebox can also connect to music sites such as Last.fm and Pandora, both of which offer a personalised music stream that will ensure you only have to listen to artists you like. This can even be narrowed down to a single artist – just be sure that you don’t disgrace the radio with 24-hour Celine Dion.
If that isn’t enough, the addition of Wi-Fi also allows the radio to stream your entire music collection over your home network and supports every available format including Digital Rights Management(DRM) protected files from the iTunes store and high quality ‘lossless’ files such as Free Lossless Audio Codec(FLAC). The set-up can be a little bit complicated but the bundled SqueezeCentre software does much to help and can be run on any computer, even Mac and Linux machines.
Profile updates
For those of you who like to post every last detail of your lives on Facebook, the Squeezebox has a range of apps including one for your favourite social network that will update your profile with whatever you are listening to. Other apps such as one for Amazon identifies the music tracks that you are listening to and allow you to purchase them from the online store with a click of a button.
Even with these stellar features, there are still some negative points that we have to mention. The biggest one is the lack of a remote control which is usually a basic accessory for this sort of radio.
Logitech have chosen to include this in an optional accessory pack which includes a remote with a rechargeable battery… if you can find somewhere that stocks the pack. A quick look through some online stores, including Amazon UK and Play.com, came up empty when we searched for one, making the omission of the remote a strange decision from the usually reliable Logitech.
All is not lost, because the iTunes App Store has an app called iPeng that, if you own an iPhone, gives you full control of the Squeezebox and the desktop software. This app costs €7.99 and is a good alternative to hunting down the accessory pack and dealing with the hassles of shipping restrictions. If you still think that paying extra for a remote is a deal breaker, then the option to control the radio from your computer should save you from grumbling too much.
The other problem is the speakers, which are OK but nothing to get excited about. Also, if we had to add something, it would be an iPod dock; a feature that would turn the Squeezebox into the complete music machine it so very nearly is.
We doubt that you will need any more encouragement from us to go out at pick up one of these, but the icing on this particular cake is the price: €145. This puts it as much as €100 cheaper than some of its competitors, competitors that don’t come anywhere near the quality of the Squeezebox’s feature set.
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