Customer Reviews

Logitech Squeezebox Radio Music Player with Color Screen (Black)

5 star:		(431)
4 star:		(171)
3 star:		(64)
2 star:		(58)
1 star:		(55)

 

 

I am a long time owner of Squeezebox products and was pretty excited to find out about the little table top Squeezebox Radio model. I picked one up and thought I would share my thoughts.

The first thing you notice is how much heft this little player has. It is really well built and the fit and finish is superb. It has plenty of weight and solid rubber feet so that it won't skid around on your night stand or table top. The screen looks great and all of the buttons have a nice solid tactile feel. Compared to many other cheap wireless network streaming radios, this device feels an entire order of magnitude better in its construction quality. The only disappointment here is the lack of back lit buttons, for using the radio in low lighting. It's also worth noting that the entire radio has a high gloss finish that will be a magnet for fingerprints. Looks great though!

The biggest challenge for most consumers with this device will be the initial set up. You need to create an account at [...] in order to set up your new Squeezebox Radio. The device uses this connection to play free internet music services as well as download software updates, etc, to the Radio. I already had a Squeezebox account so this was not a huge challenge for me, but it might be for some people who might be confused that they need to set up an account before they can use the device. There is an option to set up the account from the device itself. Don't do this (it is slow and tedious)! Go to the website and set it up in a few seconds and then just type your login and password on the device.

Other than the laborious task of entering my full email and password for [...] the rest of the setup is very easy. The Squeezebox Radio supports push to connect wi-fi set up which is common on many newer model wireless routers. It's similar to programming a garage door opener. Simply point the Squeezebox Radio at your wireless network and for 120 seconds it will try to connect with the push to connect functionality. Then just push the connect button on your router and it's automagically all set up.

Once set up the Radio will update its firmware and reboot, a process that takes a few extra minutes. After that you are good to go.

In addition to the many built in free online services, you can also play your own music through the Squeezebox Server application. I run the Squeezebox Server application on my HP EX495 Windows Home Server but you can also run Squeezebox Server on any Mac, Windows PC or even Linux box (there are even installable distributions for many Network Attached Storage units). This allows the Squeezebox Radio (and any other Squeeze players) to access all of the music on my home network. It's absolutely wonderful to be able to take the little table top radio anywhere in the home and listen to your entire music collection.

Sound quality is very good, easily enough to fill a small to medium sized room. It gets quite loud with little to no distortion and the controls are easy to use to change tracks, change volume, etc. Wireless strength is superb. I get a full signal anywhere within about 40 feet of my router, and the radio works anywhere on my suburban property with no audio hiccups or dropouts.

In addition to the intuitive controls such as "home", "play", "stop", "back", etc, the unit also features six programmable "preset" buttons similar to what you have on a car radio. Setting these up is a bit more of a challenge than you would expect. You are supposed to be able to hold these down on any song, album, playlist, etc, that is being displayed in the radio menu and have it added as a preset. Unfortunately some items don't add correctly and must first be programmed as a "favorite". It turns out that you can only add favorites for some items (such as playlists) from the Squeezebox Server web based menu, which is quite inconvenient. I don't doubt that Slim Devices (the arm of Logitech that makes these devices) will fix this soon enough.

Other minor glitches include some weird alarm behavior (it will show the time of the alarm when it is going off but strangely won't show the current time, which is annoying if you have hit the snooze button a few times and need to know what time it is), some auto dimming issues (the auto dimming works great but gets almost TOO dim in a dark room to see the radio) and a few other very minor nits.

Slim Devices have a long history of enhancement and improvement of device firmware, so I would expect a lot of these issues to be worked out in the coming months. Additionally there will soon be a battery pack and small infrared remote for the Squeezebox Radio available as a $[...] add on purchase. Personally I think at $[...] the Radio should include these items, but considering the great sound of the radio, the high quality screen and the superb fit and finish it is justified that this device costs as much as it does.

Also worth noting is that if you have an iPod Touch or iPhone you can get the iPeng application $[...] from the Apple App Store which makes controlling and programming your Squeezebox Radio an absolute breeze. iPeng is really a must have if you have these devices and want a wonderful pocket control that works from anywhere in your home. Beats the pants off of what Sonus has to offer!

//Update 1 (Nov 2nd 2009)

Yesterday my SB Radio lost all of the preset buttons which is most annoying. It also turns out that many of the requests for fixes around the alarms functionality have not been addressed and don't appear to be scheduled to be addressed in the next release or two of the software. If your primary use will be a night stand alarm clock I would recommend holding off for now until Logitech addresses alarm functionality issues. If the issues are not resolved I will reconsider my four star rating as it should then be a three star product.

//Update 2 (May 13 2010)

Logitech has not only not fixed many of the initial annoyances with the SB Radio, but newer firmware has in fact made the product less stable and reliable. It still does an admirable job of playing your local music library if you run the SB Server on a PC or Mac in your home, but the network streaming functionality seems to be having issues and I've found the alarm to be terribly unreliable. I would now under the current circumstances rate this only 3 out of 5 stars. It's really a shame too, as the "Slim Devices" that originally brought us these problems was very open and communicative about issues and what was being done to fix them. Logitech has little interest in relaying useful information to its beta testers, err, customers and instead gives us the run around with if and when issues will ever be remedied.

I've had the Squeezebox Radio for just over a week but that's long enough to decide what I like and what still needs some work. First, set-up was a snap. The radio found my wireless network instantly and I was able to enter the password and connect quickly. The radio them updated its own software so I was working with the newest release.
What do I like? The radio seems solid. It's heavy enough that you can press the buttons with the radio on a nightstand and not have it slide. The front is angled back which helps even more. I'd call the sound quality - though not stereo - excellent. There's no comparison between how this radio sounds and the Sony clock radio I replaced it with. It has a very clear, crisp sound.
What don't I like? I had the radio only three days when it lost all it's presets. I re-entered them and all has been well since. This is a well known bug. I am using [...] and NOT using my PC so the problem is likely there. Presets should be stored locally, not on a server. I saved all my presets as favorites so they MIGHT be there the next time this happens (then again, maybe the favorites list will be erased, too). I'd like to see an easier way to set the sleep timer. You have to use the menu and it should be a simple button press. Why not use the power button and cycle through sleep settings? i.e. ON ... 45 ... 30 ... 15 ... OFF? There also needs to be a simple way to snooze. Maybe the big button in the middle?
The auto-dimming setting gets awfully dark at night! I should be able to set a minimum brightness level that suits me.
And I'd love to see the apps include weather radar. Yes, this is a radio but it's got a great color display and being able to watch live weather radar on the screen would be super. A general weather app that makes use of this display would be a plus! Come on Logitech, get with it! This radio has more possibilities than, well, radio!

Later: I've had the radio for a month now and am no longer quite so excited. I reduced my initial 4 stars to just 2 stars. This radio is buggy! My initial loss of the presets has now been followed by a loss of the volume control. There was absolutely no way to get it back besides a "factory reset" which removes every setting I so carefully made. You should be able to simply sit down and enjoy a radio, not beta test a product.
I am returning it within Amazon's 30 day window. I've had enough.

When the Boom came out, I wanted to purchase it right away, but the $300 price tag and the inability to truely make it wireless detered me. Now that the Radio is out with a lower price tag, battery capability and a color LCD, I was totally sold. I've had the Radio for about a week now, and I simply love it. Even the wife was jamming to it when I got home from work the day after I bought it.

So far I have only had one issue with it...I can not find a setting to set the Album Art size to full screen on the Now Playing screen. It says in the manual that it is under the Screensaver settings, but when I go there it doesn't exist. I sent an email to Logitech support, but have not heard back from them yet. [Updated] Logitech just released a new software version that will correct this issue.

Another cool feature that I didn't realize existed, was the ability to control the Radio from the web.

As far as sound quality goes, it is far better than expected. There is virtually no distortion even at maximum volume. I even plugged a set of Computer Speakers into the Headphone Jack and it didn't make that much of a difference. The Base levels aren't that deep, but they are there. I can put it in my livingroom and pump it up near max volume and hear it clearly throughout the house.

I haven't tested the Wireless strength extensively yet, but I was able to hook it up in the garage (1 Floor below and 50 feet from the router) and the signal strength was near full.

Overall, I am very satisfied with my purchase and can't wait to get the battery pack so I can just carry this thing around anywhere.

This radio has lots of good things going for it - when it works. Unfortunately it does so at best half the time - at other times it loses the connection to [...] (which you need for almost all functions except streaming music off your PC), powers down randomly, stops playing for no obvious reason, the screen freezes and shows details of a previous show, etc. (We have one desktop PC and two laptops hanging off the same wireless network at home, so are sure that the network itself is fine.) The support forums at logitech and slimdevices have been awash with complaints about this - apparently caused by firmware updates in combination with changes at [...] - but the problem remains unsolved. What is especially maddening is that the radio worked just fine from Jan to Mar 2010, so it's also clear that this is not a hardware problem! It is possible to roll back to an older firmware version (by installing the appropriate older version of the squeezebox server on a PC, and asking the radio to connect to it using "My Music"), but even the pre-April firmware version (4.2) now has the same problems as the more recent ones.

This COULD be such a great product, but the radio firmware is HORRIBLY BUGGY! As other reviewers have observed, the radio will power off for no reason, will lose connection to the internet forcing you to constantly unplug the unit, hold down buttons upon restart, and then enter your WIFI codes again and again (not a good thing if you have a lengthy password). I have spent countless hours on the phone with Logitech support. While they are kind on the phone, they don't have an answer, and will walk you through the same instructions time and again with the same results; the next day or two, and your radio doesn't work again. I have been promised call backs from them within 24 hours with "someone who knows how to fix the problem", and no one ever calls. The last person I talked with told me I have to send the product back to them, despite the fact that they know it is a firmware problem which they have no idea if/when it will ever be fixed, and maybe a new unit will work better. What?? I was told they want to further study my radio to find out what is wrong with it, as everyone seems to be complaining of the same problems. How can a unit with the same problems be "fixed" of a known firmware problem that stymies the entire product line's function?? I love the look, sound, and feel of this radio, but it doesn't work the way it's advertised. I'm very disappointed.

I bought this product for my wife as a Christmas gift. Initially, it worked all right for the intended purpose (internet radio). Soon (a few days) it began operating erratically. I called support and got a nice guy who was able to duplicate the problem at his end. He promised to send it on to "real experts" who would find a fix for it. No such luck, and that was two months ago.

I really like this product, but it is maddening (infuriating) that it doesn't work consistently. When I turn it on, it either (1) doesn't connect to KSTX or (2) connects but then doesn't have any sound or image or (3) connects and has image but no sound or (4) connects and has sound and image. Also, there are several ways to connect, and which one works appears to be random. I believe there is an unfixed software bug somewhere in the Squeezebox or at [...], the connection provider.

I cannot recommend this product at all to anyone who is expecting a functioning internet radio.

The Squeezebox Radio is a first class, excellent Internet radio with clock/alarm functions. With the Flickr app installed, it will display photos stored under user's Flickr account. Other capabilities which are nice to have but not likely to be widely used include its ability to stream audio from a computer or double up as an iPod speaker.

PACKAGING, CONTENTS

As it's the case with most Logitech products, the Squeezebox Radio comes inside a box where everything is packed nicely and securely, with enough padding to ensure that rough treatment won't damage it. All shiny surfaces are protected by plastic film sheets. I experienced no problems or frustrations taking components out of the box.

The box contents include:

- the Radio
- power adapter with the US-standard 110V removable plug
- 3.5mm audio cord for iPod or other MP3 players
- folded poster with setup guide/manual/warranty statement

Logitech's warranty is for 2 years from date of purchase and they would expect you to have the purchase receipt and to pay for shipping unless local laws prohibit that.

INITIAL SETUP

The physical setup is as easy as attaching the removable plug to the power adapter, plugging the adapter into a power outlet and connecting it to the radio and turning the on the radio. An Ethernet port (cable not included) is available for wired connections. I did not attempt to perform a wired network setup.

Once the radio is on for the first time, a language is selected from those displayed on the screen and then the radio will attempt to find a wireless access point. In my case, it immediately found my Linksys router and connected to it.

The initial setup completed with me creating a Logitech account by providing an email address and a password. At that point it's possible to listen to the radio.

OPERATION

Radio
-----
Starting with 'radio', the array of options is almost overwhelming. The least intimidating way to get to listen to a station is by selecting 'Internet Radio'. This will open a multi-layered menu with everything from Staff Picks, Local, Music, Sports, Talk, World and Search. If you pick World, the next layer would include Find a City, Featured Cities, National Networks, World Music. Find a City would open a listing of continents. If you pick Antarctica, believe it or not, you can select between All Stations or By Genre. It turns out that the only genre in that continent was Folk and there was actually a Folk station broadcasting off Antarctica. This was just an example to show the breadth and depth of the Internet Radio menu option. Once you like a station, it can be easily assigned to one of the 6 preset buttons that flank the radio's color display.

Another way to get music off the Internet is through Apps. These are dowloadable setups that would let your radio channel some services, some of them free. There are 29 such Apps that Logitech allows you to download and use at the time this review was written, not all of them free and not all of them 'music'. Staying with the music, the easiest way you can get an App to work on your radio is from Logitech's site you access with your Logitech account - Logitech promises not to Spam you and so far I didn't get any Spam from them. My favorite FREE music App/service so far is Pandora. It lets me, among other things, create my own 'radio stations' by simply entering one or more artists and songs names. Then, Pandora will play music that is compatible with my input. For example, I entered Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix for one of my 'stations' and I get to listen to, besides theses three, the Doors, Led Zeppelin, some Cream.

The Settings menu is equally rich in options. It's another multi-layered menu tree that controls just about every aspect of your Squeeze and I'm not going to go into details because it may take several pages. The good news is that the options are pretty well organized and it shouldn't be difficult to customize the aspects of your Squeezebox behavior that you would like to modify. Thankfully, the 'Restore Factory Defaults' option exists, buried somewhere, 3 or 4 levels deep under Advanced.

Clock and Alarm
---------------
By default, the Squeezebox will display the date and time when turned off. There's no need to do anything to set date/time since it seems to 'get' the correct location for the time zone off your IP address. It's possible to select a different zone through the Settings menu, of course.

The Alarm function is surprisingly rich. Any number of separate alarms can be set - don't know if there is a limit. You can set the time, whether it's a one-time or reoccurring and if it's a repeat alarm, the day of the week it will play. The volume can be selected and then you can dive into another one of Logitech's overwhelming menu trees that allows you to sound your alarm from the current playlist or play one of many Musical Sounds, Natural Sounds, or Sound Effects. Not much to complain other than you can't hear a sample of the sound you selected or maybe I didn't know how to play it.

Other Internet Apps
-------------------
Normally, the Squeezebox will display the logo of the station you are playing or, if you are listening to a service such as Pandora, you will see the album cover the song came from. But if you install the Flickr App, you can display your Flickr pics instead. It's pretty cool but it wears off quite quickly. The color screen is nice and bright but it's also small and I get a radio because I want to listen to it, not to stare at a 2-inch screen. Again, it's nice but I wouldn't miss this capability if it wasn't available.

There are other innovative apps that may have some limited use. The Amazon app for example, will allow you to buy your favorite music directly from the Squeezebox (wow!!!). The Facebook app will, according to the Logitech site, allow you to share your favorite music with family and friends, discover new friends with similar music interests or communicate with friends away from your computer. I didn't try it yet.

More Features
-------------
As if this wasn't enough, the Squeezebox also allows you to stream music off your home computers after you install the Squeezebox Server on it - supports Windows (Vista/XP/2000), Mac, Ubuntu, Linux. Again, a nice thing to have but I simply can't see why I would want to stream music to a device equipped with a small, mono speaker. I'd rather listen to music off my laptop since it comes out in stereo there. I suspect it works well but I didn't think it was worth trying.

The Squeezebox also allows to connect and play an iPod or some other MP3 player - cable provided. And, again, it's good to have this but piping iPod music through a little mono speaker... not worth it.

Finally, you can listen to the Squeezebox with headphones. It's nice you can but I don't think too many users would care about this capability.

MY EXPERIENCE

I find the Squeezebox to be an extraordinarily great Internet Radio device. Or rather, an Alarm Clock/Internet Radio. While limited by the small, single speaker to 'mono' sound, the quality of the output is quite impressive. I suspect there's a large cache built in because, when listening to the same Pandora output on my computer and on the Squeeze, the Squeeze came pretty close to crystal-clear while my computer's output was below par.

It's impossible to say how many stations can be tuned to but the number should be in the thousands. It's not always easy to find what you are looking for but quick and dirty searches are possible by simply entering the station's call letters or you can go geographically by continent/country/city/genre.

Some of the available Apps are fun to use - something like Pandora's customized radio stations should be close to one's dream of music listening. Other apps can go in the 'wow' category as in "I can't believe they can do this" but aren't likely to be used much. The beauty of the Apps concept is that the Squeezebox is infinitely expandable as more Apps doing things we can't imagine today can be added when available.

What impressed most about the Squeezebox were:

- extraordinary easy and quick setup on a Wi-Fi network
- the sheer volume of Internet radio stations available
- the availability of great Apps such as Pandora
- the Alarm/Clock function
- the color screen that displays interesting information such as album covers or stations logos and the name of the artists playing
- infinite expandability through new Apps

Some of the shortcomings include:

- ONLY 6 preset station buttons
- mono sound
- a simple remote control would make operation easier
- there's no information in the broadcast quality (kbps) displayed anywhere or rating the station based on the quality of their broadcast
- it's possible to get lost into some of the enormous menu trees
- completely dependent on Logitech for service - nothing other than maybe streaming music from one's own computer would work if Logitech went out of business or stopped supporting the Squeezebox.

MY RATING

I really, really love this device and Amazon's rating for "I love it" is 5 stars. Clearly, it's not perfect but, for the price, this is close to the best one can get when it comes to the ability to listen to distant radio stations without involving a computer.

All we hear is Radio Ga Ga
Radio Blah Blah
Radio what's new?
Someone still loves you!

_______________________________________

Note:

Please see the first comment to this review on the ability to expand the sound quality to 'stereo' and 'amplified'. I am not likely to try that because I have other options for listening to hi-fi, loud music but it's nice to know that it can be done.

I bought the Squeezebox on a bit of a whim because I was thoroughly tired of the local radio stations. I also lived abroad for a long time, so the temptation to listen to my old "home" stations was big. I was contemplating a HD radio, but that really would have just brought the local junk stations in clearer...

All in all I am extremely happy with the Squeezebox. I read some reviews here before I bought it, so I already opened a account with Logitech. Start-up was easy, plug it in, find your wireless network, enter the password. It did do a firmware update and then I was ready to play.

The choices of stations are really overwhelming. I didn't know what to listen to at first. And this was only the "Internet Radio" option.

I then added Pandora which was very simple. Highly recommended. Even more music choices and no commercials.

I know there are even more things you can do with it, but right now I'm happy with the thousands of stations already available to me.

I hooked the Squeezebox into my big stereo via a 3.5mm-RCA cable from the headphone jack in the Squeezebox to the AUX input in my stereo. The sound from the Squeezebox alone is very nice, through the stereo it's amazing.

I never tried the Alarm Clock functions of the Squeezebox, so I can't comment on those.

The Squeezebox looks very nice. No complaints there. I also like the fact that the display dims and gets really dark when the room is dark, which I really like. Most alarm clocks still light up the room at night, the Squeezebox does not.

Reception around the house is great. In my living room which is about 40 feet and two walls from the router, it reports full signal strength, better than my laptops. Never had any reception problems. Of course, it does take a little hit on the available internet bandwidth, but not enough to really notice or be bothersome.

My biggest issue is that the Squeezebox only has 6 actual station memory buttons. With the ability to have so many choices, they should have really tried to add some more buttons for simplicity. It's not a deal killer though. Also the whole search process (entering the letters via the wheel controller) can be tedious. But again, I enjoy the new radio experience enough to overlook all that.

If there was a Squeezebox II, I would like to see maybe a small pull out keyboard or a remote with a little keyboard. That would be fantastic.

But as for now, if you are contemplating getting a internet radio, you should really give this one a shot. I am having way more fun with it than I thought I would.

I am studying German and have been told that it helps if you listen to German radio so I ordered the Squeezebox Radio on the recommendation of my friend Scott. I find the Squeezebox Radio to be perfect for the night stand, where I will be listening to the radio before I got to bed.

I set the presets with Berlin radio stations and linked via Wi-Fi and it sounds great in both spoken word and also music.

PRO: The set up was so easy and it even made the WPA/WEP key entry for my Verizon FIOS Internet.

I was also able to easily find all the stations I listened to in Berlin when I lived there and I was also able to find local stations and I could easily "install" BBC and CBC and even a Facebook and a Flickr applet. I am very pleased. I got a red one.

The date and time is awesome because it is updated via Internet so I didn't even need to set the date or time -- so I also have myself an atomic clock, I guess.

There are multiple alarms and also a line in so I can run my iPod and my iPod shuffle through the device, too, which is great for my German homework (a CD I burnt to MP3).

CON: A little expensive but you get a lot more than just a radio. It doesn't come with a rechargeable battery pack or the remote -- an additional $50.

BOTTOM-LINE: Small and deceptively powerful -- it is basically a little Linux box in a small boom box/Internet clock radio -- and it is the most modern of the Squeezebox line so you can do very cool stuff with the device. Easy to set up and to start using.

It can work as simply as a clock radio with presets or you can get all geeky and install apps and podcasts and you can connect to SIRIUS and all those other paid streaming services. I love it. It is my new favorite thing.

I bought this "radio" about 6 months ago so I could listen to favorite news talk stations from around the USA. Although it is not intutive, I finally figured out how to select and save my stations and everything worked fine for awhile. But now is behaving very erractically and there doesn't seem to be any one solution to the problems. All of a sudden, the streaming stops and the radio (actually a computer) doesn't respond to the preset station buttons. Sometimes, shutting it down and rebooting will solve the problem. At other times this doesn't help and I have to try different menu options (with no instructions) repeatedly until I finally am able to get the preset buttons to function again. It is a very frustating process.
I love the concept of internet radio, but this machine's quirky behaviour is no fun. Especially at the modertely high cost that Logitech charges.