Customer Reviews

RCA Infinite Radio RIR200 Internet Radio with Wifi Connectivity and Slacker Personal Radio

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been waiting for this gem for months and it's been worth the wait. Compare this wifi radio to ones costing $300+. One of the nice features is its ability to connect with Slacker radio which, if you have a premium account lets you listen to customized stations that you set up. Another nice feature is the auto-setting clock and the weather report at the touch of a button. If you have a USB flash drive or other USB device (FAT 12/16/32) you can playback MP3,WMA and Real audio files as well. I hooked up my Polk stereo via the headphone jack and switched on Slacker...it really sounds good over my home WiFi connection. This radio also has standard AM\FM. This is really quite a remarkable unit for the price.

I've had this radio for about a week and am very happy with it. In particular, I enjoy the Slacker service (after discovering that one must set up "Custom" stations if they are to be accessed via the radio). Playing music from a USB "stick" also works well as does the Internet Radio option. It is nice to have 6 presets available because accessing additional "favorite" stations takes a number of button pushes!

On the negative side, the speakers are clear but seem to have very little bass. Attaching a small pair of Labtec speakers improved the sound quality significantly.

The specifications for this radio do not claim that it can access music stored on a local network and, indeed, it does not seem able to do so.

I'm currently using the radio via an ethernet cable which works very well. I am NOT able to use it via WiFi because my network uses WEP security with Key #2 rather than the default Key #1. (NOTE: WEP security allows 4 encryption keys to be specified even though only one key is used at a given time.) I sent a "help" request via the RCA radio site but have not received a reply. (I suspect this radio cannot access a WEP protected network that use anything other than WEP Key #1.)

All-in-all I'm very happy with this radio and would recommend it to anyone looking for a flexible, inexpensive Internet radio.

I've been using this for about 3 weeks. Except for needing an occasional reboot it works fine. I cannot vouch for the FM/AM performance since I listen to local stations via their internet feed. I had a Chumby but sent it back because it did not function well as a clock radio. This does: its only deficiency is that it has but one alarm. It's speakers produce a good, clear sound and the selection of stations is very large. I would buy it again.

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Simple review, angle shots of the RCA Infinite Radio RIR200

I had looked around for a wifi radio and finally settled on the RCA because of the relatively low price. I was astonished at the great sound this unit produces. The setup of the internet portal was easy, as was the setup of the wireless connection.

I don't use the Slacker Radio subscribe option---there's no need to. You can designate as many "favorite" internet stations for free as you want. All the stations I have are actual radio stations streaming their signals on the internet. From WINS 1010 and WCBS 880 in New York to WEEI sports talk in Boston, WLS Chicago, and oldies stations such as WLNG Sag Harbor and a lot of great Vermont stations, I'm all set. It appears you cannot get the BBC stations at this point, but you can get all the CBC stations you could want.

If you have a thumb drive, you can plug it in the back and play all of your itunes with great audio quality, and you can record hours of radio on the unit's internal memory. I'm still getting the hang of the alarm clock settings. And, unless you want a very bright nightlight, go to settings and display to turn the brightness down. All in all, great value for the money. That's probably why it's out of stock as I write this.

I have been a radio buff for over sixty years and have been looking for a radio that plays stations from all over the world. The RCA RIR200 seems the perfect fit! I have been using it for only a few days now but I am impressed by its wide range of capabilities - internet radio, personal music (Slacker), AM, FM, and even the weather - and by how simple the set-up is (I'm using the ethernet cable). The sound quality is excellent as well. I had surveyed the whole range of radios available and this seemed the most flexible and easiest to use, while also being the most least expensive.
One minor disappointment - My favorite radio station is BBC4 and it doesn't seem to be available, nor are RTE1 and Lyric Radio (both Ireland), two others that I really like. There is a wide choice - thousands -otherwise, however, and I love BBC3 and the like and I found a great traditional Irish music station. The Slacker feature also affords a wide choice of music, talk, etc.
This is a great radio.
A revision: since I wrote the above my one disappointment has disappeared. The Audiovox people who developed the RCA RIR200 have sent me the proper URLs to get the stations I really wanted. So to all the great features above, add wonderful consideration and service. JM

I have been using this radio off and on for about 2 days. It is compact, atractive, well designed and well engineered. It is easy to use and so far, very reliable with excellent sound quality. The RCA website setup for the Slacker account would not, for unknown reasons accept my email address, so I could not set up the Slacker account, but I easily set up the internet radio function using the radio controls. The internet radio capability to listen to a wide variety of stations is exactly what I wanted and I am very happy with this device. In other words, I am impressed.

I got my RCA Infinite Radio RIR200 in mid November and as so many of the reviews state its a neat radio and I would recommend it. In fact I liked it so much I immediately bought a second one for a Christmas gift. The second radio however was dead on arrival. After a few seconds upon powering it up a message would appear saying something like the WiFi radio module failed to initialize and the radio would lockup. I sent it back to Amazon for an exchange but sadly the replacement will not be sent until well after Christmas.

As a whole the radio works very well but there are some bugs and short comings. I like talk radio so I wanted a radio with AM capabilities. This radio does not have an internal AM antenna and requires an external loop antena which is not very convinent for a bedside clock radio. The external antenna may have been required because the radio seems to generate some RF. Electronic crosstalk can be heard from the speakers when the radio is trying to connect to an internet station or access its Wheather Bug feature.

Occationally when the radio tries to access the internet It locks up for a while if the internet station is unavailable or other internet servers it requires are busy but will usually return to normally afer 10 seconds or so.

The radio has the ability to record audio content to its internal memory and playback recordings from both its memory or from mp3 files stored on an external USB device such as a thumb drive. Playback however does not support fastforward or reverse so if you record say an hour radio program and want to listen to something that is a half-hour into the program you have to play from the beginning and wait a half-hour before you get to the part you want to hear.

There are problems with the weather features of the radio. The radio support a text-to-speech feature which gives the forecast in one of several selectable voices. This stops work over a period of a couple of days. The problem can be fixed for a while by removing power and rebooting the radio. This problem is supposed to be fixed with an update to the firmware. Also the radio has a wheater alert feature but I found that during a snow storm the alert feature becomes a pain. You can't turn the feature totally off (only the sound) and you can not dismiss the alerts.


Firmware updates are a problem too. Updates can be performed directly using the radio's internet connection or installed from a USB device such as a thumb drive. If the thumb drive method is used the firmware is supposed to be available from the company's website but the URL www.infiniteradio.com stated in their FAQs is not correct. I perfer to update the radio manually so if there is a problem with the update I can theoretically restore the radio to a previously working update.

Well so far I have not been able to obtain the firmware and after several days of the radio nagging me that a new update was available every time I turned it on, I let it automatically do the update. I was pretty happy with the radio up to now but not being able to turn off the nagging update feature off with out doing an update is a problem. You can always go to the radio's Setting menu and manually iniate a check for updates. Allowing the radio to update was a big mistake. It updated the radio to firmware 1.2.3.1 but immediatelly I noticed that the AM radio feather was now broken and next to useless.

I sent RCA some email on this but no answer as yet.


The bottom line is the radio has great features but from my experience with the second radio being dead on arrival and the first one broken do to a poorly tested update which I can not back out its a product still in development and has some quality control issues and bugs to be ironed out.

Bought two of these for my 78 year old mom who loves BBC Radio3. This product makes me smile because it's so well done. The setup was a breeze. The sound quality is great. It's an incredible value for the money. My mom is thrilled with it! Thanks RCA!

BTW, am using Powerline Turbo 85Mbps Homeplug Ethernet Adapterrather than Wi-Fi to connect them. They worked without any setup. Just plugged them in and go. It's wonderful when high-tech stuff works without hassle.

I like this because this relpaces my old clock radio and cost 1/3 less than other devices that I was considering buying. I was looking for Internet radio because I could only pick up a few stations with my old clock radio. I like the Slacker Radio although I think it repeats alot of the music. I have yet to full explore the internet radio and will as time goes on. The AM & FM tuners (digital) seem to be pretty good also.

I received the RIR200, followed the QuickStart guide set up instructions and it worked flawlessly.