Squeezebox Radio

[tylinski]

Yesterday, I purchased the Squeezebox Radio, which is a wi-fi radio made by Logitech. Best Buy has it on sale this week for $150. Amazon.com has a similar price. I thought I would provide a brief review of it and share my initial thoughts.

The product is a small "radio" slightly larger than an alarm clock. It has a single 4" 2-way speaker, a small LCD screen for navigation and displaying album art, along with several control buttons. It accesses your home network either through wireless or wired connection. It can stream music stored on any computer connected to the network, additionally, it does internet radio stations and music streaming sites and local radio stations.

The local radio stations I would care about are all accessible through the device via their respective internet streaming feeds. I have a Pandora account since my Blu-ray player can stream that, so I can access that Pandora account on the Squeezebox as well. Streaming music from my HP windows home server and PC has worked well so far. I've tried MP3 and WMA files, but I have not tried any of my WMA Lossless files yet to see if they work.

I've only had a chance to play around with it for an hour or so, but overall I really like it. Setup was simple. So far the box seems responsive with very little delay when accessing music files or switching source. It will take more time to see if there are glitches or dropouts in playback. Sound quality is surprisingly decent given its small size and I think it is perfectly acceptable for what the device is.

There are a couple of minor issues so far. The finish is gloss black, so you get the usual fingerprints and such. You scroll through the menus and lists using a jog dial on the front which works fine until you get to a really long list. The issue is that when you get to the end of a list the scrolling stops and you can't cycle right back to the front - you have to scroll all the way back by going in the opposite direction. There is a search feature, so we'll see how much this matters. Another minor gripe is that each source (PC, server, etc.) that you want the radio to be able to access and get audio from must download and run Logitech's server console, which is a small program that runs in the background and catalogs files and controls settings on the player. Having the server software running isn't a big deal since it runs in the background and doesn't take much resources, but it is one more music file collating thing to have to deal with. So far it has been transparent though.

I got the device because of it's small size and ability to move it around the house and get access to music wirelessly. You do have to plug the box into an outlet, so it is not completely portable. Supposedly, Logitech is releasing a battery pack for this thing next month which will be sold separately. I'll see if that is worth it.

Given its price point I don't think you can go wrong with this little box if you want to get music in other rooms.

[tylinski]

I've run into a little problem with my radio. The device has been working great... until I tried to download the latest firmware. A message popped up on the display a couple of days ago saying I needed to update the device. Since then I have had to download the same update every night and now it is having trouble connecting to my various music sources.

Until I see how this gets rectified I can't recommend the device anymore.