Roth KRadio internet/DAB/FM radio and music player review

What is the Roth KRadio?

The Roth KRadio would be at home in almost any room in the house. As well as bringing you your favourite radio shows, it provides access to podcasts and your complete MP3 music collection via internet connectivity. It also comes with a remote control so you can change channels, adjust the volume and skip tracks when you’re not within arms reach.

Is it easy to get started?

The presence of a paper manual in the box is refreshing – we particularly like the menu structure diagram, which helps you find the functions you’re looking for quickly when starting out.

The buttons on the radio are backlit and touch sensitive – they flash briefly when pressed, providing speedy visual feedback that you’ve pressed something. This is handy as there can be a bit of delay with DAB radios when changing stations.

The illuminated white text on blue background display stands out well and there’s plenty of screen space for information. Scrolling text is displayed three lines at a time, moving upwards like TV credits – one of the easiest to read formats we’ve seen.

The time is displayed in the top right corner of the screen, so you can view the time even when the radio’s on. The channel you’re tuned to is displayed in larger text that’s easier to see from a distance.

The screen is generally easy to read, but if you’re sideways on at the same level as the radio, or at a few specific points looking down on it’s harder to view.

How does it sound?

Based on some objective listening the Roth Kradio sounds pretty good and speech is easy to hear. There are equaliser settings available to choose from, so you can pick the setting that best suits what you’re listening to – the rock setting produced a suitably punchy bassy sound. There are no dedicated bass or treble dials though.

Until it’s tested in our lab we can’t comment on how it directly compares to other models.

What’s it like to use?

Setting presets is really simple using the remote control – you can save up to 10 DAB, 10 FM and 10 internet radio stations as presets. There’s room for even more internet radio stations to be saved in the ‘My favourites’ menu, but you’ll need to use your computer to save stations to this menu.

Searching for internet stations by name isn’t quick, but at least the full alphabet is displayed on screen at once. Using the arrow keys on the radio or remote you spell out the station name you want. You can also search for stations using other methods including by country, or genre.

The KRadio has an iPod dock on top that’s also compatible with iPhone. The cover is easy to remove and replace to stop it getting dusty when you’re not using it.

We were able to dock an iPod Classic in a hard case without having to remove the case and iPods can be charged in the dock. You can control a docked iPod using the remote control. If you have a different type of MP3 player you can connect using the supplied cable and 3.5mm socket on the back of the unit.

What else do I need to know?

There are two independently programmable alarms which can be set to sound once, daily on weekdays or weekends. You can choose to wake to a buzzer, your docked iPod, or internet, DAB or FM radio and you can select from the last station you listened to or one of your preset stations. You can programme the volume level.

The Roth KRadio is priced at £199, available from Tesco Direct.

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