Customer Reviews

Grace Digital GDI-IRD4400m Wireless Internet Radio Featuring Pandora, NPR On-Demand and SIRIUS

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This radio is an excellent product. It set up in a couple of minutes and has proven to be reliable and very easy to use. My single complaint is the headset and stereo jacks on the device. There is an AM-like static present when I plug in headphones or connect in my stereo. The noise on the headphones is 'tolerable', but the stereo connection was terrible. I e-mailed Grace Digital Radio Technical support with my problem. They replied and stated that I shouldn't be having static on the audio output (I figured that out all by myself). They then suggested that I try alternative radio stations (AM and FM) and advise if I had a similar issue. I explained that the radio was not an AM/FM radio but internet and that all types of stations on the internet exhibited the same problem. They never replied back to me. I've attempted a couple of times to get a response from them to no avail. In one attempt, I suggested that, perhaps I should return the radio and obtain one from another manufacturer. Still no reply. In a word, customer support for this product - stinks.

I now own two Internet Radios, the Sanyo R227 and the Grace GDI-IRD4400m. Both are stereo radios, however I think that the Grace Radio is somewhat superior to the Sanyo. Many of the features of the Grace radio would be similar to their 1000 and 2000 models. I do question Grace's quality control as I had difficulty getting one that worked from Amazon. The display faded after two days with the first one, and the second one wouldn't initialize. The third has worked like a charm. Maybe it was just my bad luck, but I didn't sweat it as Amazon.com has an excellent defective return policy. Both radios are programmable on-line through Reciva.
You really need internet access to Reciva to easily set up both radios, although it can be done from the radio itself. The radio must be registered with Reciva for it to work. Sign up is easy. It is somewhat difficult to add a station to Reciva, if it does not already exist. You need to find out the URL for the internet radio station listen button, which is not easy to determine. The website is not user friendly with regard to adding a station. Try an email to info@reciva.com if you have trouble. Wireless set up on both radios somewhat difficult, but you only have to do it once. To get an Internet radio to work, you may have to adjust your router for maximum signal. If you have DSL, the phone company makes the settings on their end. They are extremely helpful in doing that.
The software in both radios is very similar. However, "Configure" on the Sanyo Radio should have been labeled "Settings" as it is on the Grace radio to be less confusing.
What follows are the pros and cons of each radio.

SANYO R227
Pros:
1) Small table radio size, side firing speakers
2) Blue color of display, however display is small
3) Front mounted headphone jack, rear mounted fixed level line out
4) Good sound considering the size of the radio. Sound quality can be vastly improved by adding an inexpensive subwoofer computer speaker set
5) Can be used with home wireless wi-fi setup or direct wired Ethernet cable to a router, however the instructions say that once it is used with an Ethernet cable, the internal electronics will be change and can no longer be used as a wireless receiver.
6) Credit card sized remote control.
7) Has FM broadcast band, although switching to it can be a pain
8) FM pigtail antenna leaves a lot to be desired. Should have had a RF (F-connector) output for FM antenna
9) Can be programmed on-line at Reciva, which is much easier to do than from the radio itself. This also applies to Grace radio.
10) Defaults to mid range pre-set volume setting when you turn the radio on. Good idea for alarm set after low volume sleep setting. Because of long initialize time (or failure to initialize), I wouldn't trust the radio set to radio alarm clock. I'd only use buzzer setting. If buzzer setting is used while headphones are plugged in, wakeup sound and buzzer would only be heard through headphones, a drawback.
11) Has 3.5mm Aux input on rear.

Sanyo R227
Cons:
1) lacks tone controls or preset tone settings
2) Every time you turn radio on, it has to re-initialize which can take a minute or more. A serious drawback.
3) has LCD brightness control for "active" and "standby" states, but lacks brightness setting for "inactive" state. Serious drawback for a dark bedroom
4) does not have access to Pandora ([...]) which is another Internet radio service. Pandora does not program in specific radio stations as [...] does, but will play songs in a specific genre. Free, but may be limited to 40 hours/month. Subscription service available.
5) illogical remote makes it difficult to select various choices in the menu
6) Only 8 station pre-sets, but can be accessed from radio and remote
7) pre-sets on radio and volume controls not easily accessible. Big knob should have also functioned as a volume control. Illogical drawback.
8) For two months, the third line of the display, title and artist, did not work. Just continually read "Real Enabled". This is what is called the Metadata line. Didn't realize that the line should display title and artist until I got the Grace Radio. It now works, but I am not sure exactly how I got it to work. 1) Sent email to Reciva with a request to activate. 2) I found out from the Reciva forum that an older website than Reciva (do an Internet search for "Tangent Radio"), which you would also have to register on, has a setting under "my radios" that will activate the "real enabled" when you click on your radio ID. Both Tangent and Reciva are tied together so you won't have to re-register the radio. The next day the metadata line worked. Was it the email to Reciva or the Tangent website?
9) Almost non-existent customer or technical support from Sanyo.

GRACE GDI-IR4400m
Pros:
1) larger radio size, more like the size and shape of a stereo system component
2) large LCD display, white background, black lettering. Brightness settings for Standby, Active, and Inactive states (Sanyo lacks setting for inactive state). Also has contrast control, which the Sanyo lacks.
3) Upward firing speakers. You could stack something on top of this radio with a few spacers to let sound out. Good sound. Has bass, treble, and pre-set tone control settings. Best sound with full bass and treble. 15 watt amp that has provisions on back of receiver to add external speakers.
4) Logical remote. Sized like small handheld remote. Just about everything that can be accessed from remote can be accessed from the radio itself. Large knob on radio functions as volume control. Controlling radio from radio itself is easier than with the Sanyo, especially in the dark.
5) 10 pre-sets, but only first five can be accessed from radio itself. All 10 easily accessed from remote.
6) Also programmable from Reciva, but also has Pandora, and subscription services, Live 365 and Sirius, although every review I've read says that Sirius does not work.
7) Does not initialize every time you turn the radio on. Immediately plays last station you listened to.
8) Excellent customer and technical support.
9) No problem with all three lines of display working.

GRACE GDI-IR4400m
Cons:
1) Rear headphone jack. It should be on the front. Lacks line out jacks on rear, although headphone jack could be used for that purpose. However this method produces a variable line output (affected by volume control). Sound quality of headphone jack, even when used as an aux out, is not very good.
2) No Ethernet cable jack, thus can't hardwire to a router. Only works with home wi-fi system.
3) Alarm radio volume set to whatever you set it at when you turned radio off.
4) Does not have Aux input.

Before you buy an Internet radio, you should look at Reciva and Pandora websites. You don't need an internet radio to use the websites. They can be used with any computer. I've had a problem with trying to listen to a Reciva radio station on the computer. Get pop ups continually asking me "Do you want to view only the website content that was delivered securely". Select "no" at this prompt or radio station won't play. Sometimes the pop ups come up under the web page you are looking at. This makes using Reciva a pain as a computer Internet radio. The pop ups are not consistent.
I think I've covered everything I wanted to with these two radios. Since the price of each is very close, I'd go for the Grace Radio, although it's larger size might not be your choice for a nightstand. Amazon's dimensions given are incorrect. The radio is smaller. Investigate [...] for sizing.

November, 2009 - This radio has superior sound, features, and usability -- it has been a worthy replacement for my previous Bose Wave Radio. Reliability, however, has not been on par with its other attributes. The original unit, ordered new from Amazon, arrived with a dead internal power supply. After receiving a replacement unit from Amazon, the radio's internal power supply has failed a second time after only 60+ days of moderate use. This unit is located in our master bedroom, an environment that is regularly cleaned and fairly dust-free. While Grace Audio offers a 1-year warranty, it does not reimburse customer shipping costs for warranty repairs.

This is my first Internet radio and I have been very pleased thus far with this product. I'm using a D-Link Router (Dir-655) along with a D-Link Network Storage Enclosure (DNS-323). The latter contains my music files and is used to stream music to the radio.

The set up went very smoothly with the radio quickly identifying all the wireless routers within close range. After going through the tedious task of entering the router's wireless access code, the radio connected immediately. The radio has no problem receiving signals anywhere within my home.

I had no trouble finding the stations using the radio's controls which were very intuitive. The quality of the sound was good-to-very good, but not quite as good as a high quality FM radio. I'm not sure whether this caused by the nature of the Internet radio or the quality of the speakers. To my ear, the radio's bass was a little "boomy." The radio's controls allow you to adjust the treble and the bass and choose from several presets. I have not had a chance to connect the radio to a set of external speakers, but will do so to see if that improves the quality of the sound.

The volume control has detents and sometimes I find it difficult to get the precise volume that I want. The same knob - when pressed -- is used to make selections. If you press too hard, you can move the radio backwards owing to light weight.

The radio has 5 station pre-sets and the remote control allows for an additional five. Given the number of stations to choose from, I would liked to have seen more pre-set buttons on the radio.

The radio's display is easy to read and provides good detail. It's brightness and contrast is adjustable, an important feature if you keep the radio by your bedside. The radio has a clock which is set via the Internet, multiple alarms, and a variable sleep timer, making it a good clock radio. It does not have a battery back-up and I'm not sure whether it retains alarm settings in the event of a power failure. That's something I need to test.

The Reciva website is fairly easy to use and I had no trouble setting stations and podcasts. Once the stations and podcasts are set via the web, they appear on the radio in the "my stuff" category. I have been very impressed by the amount of content available. There are even a few channels that stream police radios in cities like San Diego and Baltimore. Once you have used an Internet radio, you'll find it difficult to listen to an ordinary AM and FM receiver.

I set up a free Pandora account which allows the user to set up personal music "channels" featuring the musician, band, type of music etc. of your choice. So if you want a Beethoven channel or one that plays the Beach Boys, the choice is yours. Very impressive.

I was able to stream my personal music collection which resides on a network storage enclosure. The setup was quick and without a hitch. You can also stream music from your computer's hard drive, but I have not tested that yet.

I don't subscribe to Sirius, so I can't comment on that feature. But if you have an account, that's another good reason to get this radio.

I've only had the radio for two weeks and can't comment on its reliability. Problems with electronic products usually appear early on, but there are exceptions to this rule.

If you enjoy listening to radio and have a wireless router, I recommend that you consider this product. It packs quite a few features in a small box.


Update - I've been using the radio for more than a year and it has performed flawlessly. On a few occasions, I've had to reboot it (simply turned it off and on), but other than that, it operates as advertised and I've never had to contact customer support. I have several other radios -- including a shortwave -- but this is the one that I use the most.

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I original panned this radio in my first review because the radio could not receive WQXR 105.9 in New York City. I contacted Grace and they said that they could not obtain the url for the music stream from WQXR's website.

After doing a little research on the net I found out how to obtain the url for any streamed music ( a very simple process ) on the Internet. After programming this url on Reciva's website, which then electronically sent it to my radio, I can now receive WQXR's webstream on my Grace radio. By the way, by using the Reciva website you can program any number of stations onto your radio. All and all an excellent product.
Anthony Darienzo

The best sound is through your own pandora account. Trouble connecting to the wireless network and had to call the company and they instructed me through the reset process. Would have been nice if the reset process was in the original setup instructions and when to reset. It looses the signal from time to time. I did try my computer speakers and there was too much noise to use them--I have not tried other speakers yet. Have a Tivoli on order, but that costs $500 more and so for the price, this one is fine.

We bought one of these radio's to play through wifi in our small bakery so that we could set it in something without running wires all over the place. It works great the majority of the time and for the most part we play our Pandora Radio through it. Set up was pretty easy and took maybe 10 minutes. Being able to set the alarm to go off every morning 5 minutes before we get to work is great, that way we show up and the music is already on(most of the time).

There are times when it doesn't want to connect to the wifi signal even though it's available. We have a laptop and free wifi for the store that is always on and working. Sometimes it just can't find it though and normally unplugging for a few seconds fix's it, but not always. Other times just out of the blue even though it's connected, it just won't play. There could be various messages given even a as simple as "Unable to Play". At these times is when I go nuts as there is pretty much no support from Grace. It could start working again 10 minutes later or the next day. You never know. Some times it will just effect Pandora, sometimes just radio streams...sometimes everything.

Other pluses are being able to listen to podcast through it. I have a few from iTunes that I listen to at home from my PC, but I can turn em on here after we close and while cleaning up to get caught up on em, which is nice.

Overall It's a great little radio and I highly recommend it, if I were to buy another internet radio in the future I wouldn't think twice about purchasing a 2nd one of these.

I shopped it seemed forever for a new alarm clock. Of course, regular radios have issues with reception, and CD players' spinning is too loud. Man, am I glad I did my homework. Not only is this a great alarm clock (wake up to the music I want to hear with clarity), it's a great single room stereo! It connects to hundreds of free Internet radio stations, my free Pandora stations, and my Windows media music share!! All the music I can handle! I like the multi-level dimming on the background light. I turn it off at night b/c I don't like any light, but have it come on when in use and for the alarm. I happened to have a pair of extra PC stereo speakers, so I hooked them up for an even-better sound. GREAT buy.

I called their customer service department and was recommended to this new model. I bought a Logitech squeezebox from Best buy and find it to difficult to operate. I could never get it logged on to my home network. Took it back.

This radio has wonderful sound quality. It fills my whole kitchen with music.

The incredible part is the station selection. So many choices, you can spend hours experimenting with new stations around the world. There have been so many hours of personal enjoyment, its worth every penny!