Customer Reviews

Grace Digital GDI-IRP600 Wi-Fi Internet Radio with FM Tuner

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

 

 

Background: licensed ham radio (K4GPB) operator, since 1961. Tired of the current sunspot cycle and poor shortwave listening reception, so I bought this. I am normally not an early adopter of stuff.

Router is a WRT54GL, using WPA encryption. Set up and saving of profile was very easy. Router was 6 feet away.
WRE54G Range Expander also in use so I can go anywhere while in battery mode around the house with laptop or radio. (So I thought)

Had music playing after about 25 minutes out-of the-box. I quickly set 10 presets for all my usual live talk radio shows across the USA, TV sound, + BBC. 5 presets at the radio, and 5 additional ones from the remote. 16x2 display is nice and bright for sure

Tried to submit the MAC address at [...], but they are not yet set up for USA. Sigh.

I like the battery operated feature, for future sitting out on the screened porch this summer, hearing the BBC talk about the USA. 6 AA cells. Not many feature-loaded Internet radios can go portable.

The credit card size remote works fine.
FM receiver is a nice bonus and quite sensitive.
Windows Medial Player support is cool. I can play all my MP3s and stored podcasts

Next goal is to locate the English-language International news broadcasters.

So nice to listen to music, talk, news without the usual annoying Windows sounds & pauses. The blue glow from the display and tuner knob will no doubt help me find the remote in the dark. ;-)

No Reciva support!!!! Ugh

I tried it in other rooms of the house, with two range expanders running and got DHCP errors, and with expanders off it gave me the dreaded weak signal message, so back it goes to Amazon. With expanders off, I get 2-3 bars throught the house.

In comparison to the Grace IR1000 (the first generation Grace internet radio I believe):
Range is poor...fine I suppose if you are using in the same room as your wifi access point
Sound quality went downhill considerably...smaller speaker in a smaller box
Quite small
Uses V-Tuner not Reciva portal
Could not get it to connect to my wifi range extender which works fine for several laptops and my Grace IR1000

I just can't recommend this one (though there is something to be said for the battery backup which maintains the connection while moving it about the house).

I bought a factory refurbished model and I am very satisfied. I wanted an Internet Radio that would run on batteries so I could carry it around the house and into the yard. This is perfect! I don't have any problems with the wireless function. It was easy to set up and it's a lot of fun to explore the wide range of stations. I've been very interested in Internet Radios for a while but I was put off by the price. When I found this factory refurb on Amazon at less than half the retail price I had to give it a try and I'm glad I did.

This is the best radio I've ever used. Having written that, it can be difficult to setup. The manual needs more sections to help people without computer networking expertise. Setup can be very hard depending on the user's network configuration. For me, my router's firewall was blocking the transmission to the radio. Since I knew to check the firewall setup, I was able to easily connect the radio to my home wifi. After I got the internet connection working, I was very happy with the sound and capability of the radio.

A few days later, I tried to connect to my PC. Under Vista, I could not get the radio to connect to my PC. After an hour or two, I gave up and tried to make it work with Ubuntu and Mediatomb. I've never used Mediatomb, but it worked after only a few minutes.

I live where radio signals are weak. With this radio and my broadband internet service, I get strong and clear reception to almost any radio station in the world.

We had some problems at first, but email correspondence cleared it up mostly. Their response was prompt, tactful, and helpful.
We still have occasional interruptions in our service, but it is now much better.

The best thing about this radio,is the Grace Customer service and Support!I have a Cisco Linksys wireless router,which is unsecured.When I received the 600 I could find my network,but could not connect to it.The radio would power down but not complete the connection.I have another Grace Radio in the house,a 1000 model,it works fine and connected the first time I powered it up!After contacting the Grace ,they sent me a replacement unit,even before I sent the original unit back.The replacment unit did the same thing,so Grace Support suspects the platform which is different for the 1000 and 600,another thing to remember is that the 1000 uses RECIVA as the 600 uses VTUNER.I am going to sent the 600 back for refund and pick up the ALLEGRO which uses RECIVA and has same platform as my working 1000 unit,and as the 600 ,has battery power portability and a FM TUNER.Thank you Grace Support and Customer Service.

You know they can put a man on the moon and I've been through 5 internet radios and they are finicky! Unless the moon is aligned just right, they don't work and make sure you set aside 30 minutes ahead of time to allow them to boot, connect to the wifi and then pick a station that actually works in order to listen. As for this one, the software is buggy, you have to try different ways in the menus and finally it will connect to your wifi. Now I don't know if I got a bad unit or if it's by design, but I cannot use this thing to listen to internet radio on batteries. It works fine on the power supply but doesn't play on batteries. Maybe another 10 years and someone will actually be able to make one that boots fast and plays reliable. We need someone that can do for these what Apple did for the phone.

This Internet radio is pretty well constructed. Configuring and operating it is pretty straight forward (requires wireless access point). Sound quality is acceptable - no Bose. This radio uses Aupeo service but no Pandora, so that's a negative.

In general, it's a pretty decent internet radio (good build quality, acceptable audio, easy configuration).

Grace Internet audio refuses offer ACC+ compatibility. This is a big problem. Most major radio station streaming is going to ACC+. Recommend you stay away from Grace Audio and any other internet radio that does not support ACC+.

This radio DOES NOT receive AAC+ encoding. If you check the Grace site - it indicates the radio does reciev AAC+ and it will list stations transmitting in AAC as being able to be received on ALL grace radios. This is FALSE. This radio cannot receive AAC+.