Customer Reviews Read 3 more reviews... good first start December 21, 2008 Oregon Washington Model Railroader (United States)
Wifi Radio opens up a wonderful dimension where we can get radios stations that we cannot receive over the air due to distance. The only issue holding it back is the actual stations. If you want BBC or NPR, no problem. But id you want an AM station to listen to a particular broadcast of a local high school football game as I had hoped, you will be disappointed. Hope the variety of stations expands, then it will be worth it.
Very nice Internet Radio December 16, 2008 thehammer (PA, USA) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The WiFi Internet Radio by C.Crane is a good tabletop clock radio. It is easy to set up (if you can connect your computer to your wireless network, then this is a snap). It seamlessly integrates with the Reciva website making selection of your favorite Internet music easy to do. Its small footprint makes it a good substitute for existing clock radios. The sound is not hi fi, but better than most clock radios. Some have complained about dropped connections to their network. But that is due to the quality and signal strength of their connection - not the fault of the radio itself. If your computer cannot hold a radio station then this Internet Radio will not be able to do so either. The good: 99 presets, fairly easy to navigate, reasonably loud clear audio. Small tabletop footprint. Easy to set up. Integrates with Reciva website. The bad: Time not visible while in use. Only 3 front panel presets. Cannot easily scan presets. No bass or treble control.
American Style of Internet Radio or special American price? December 9, 2008 Brian (Springfield, NJ) 11 out of 11 found this review helpful
It looks like we are supposed to believe that C.Crane has designed this for the American Market. On their website it states: "Well, we couldn't let the Europeans and Brits have all the glory, so we've built a WiFi radio of our own." The problem is, it doesn't look like they designed this radio or built it. It seems they are taking a radio they are buying from someone else and sticking their name (and a $100 premium) on it. If you go to Amazon's German site and search for IPdio mini Internetradio, you will find the exact same radio for 85 euros (about $100). So what are American's paying twice as much for, the brand name C.Crane stuck on the radio? BTW, in Germany the same company sells the C.Crane radio and the Grace radio. They sell the Grace radio for more money and position the C.Crane one as their cheaper "Mini" radio.
Thin Plastic, thin sound. CCrane can do better, November 29, 2008 Greg S. Saunders 9 out of 10 found this review helpful
I have had a trio of wi-fi radios, and this is by far, the flimsiest device of the three. I don't mind plastic radios, but I never knew that plastic could be produced this thin. To say that the tuning knob has the feel of a Fisher-Price toy radio, is to besmirch a perfectly good toy maker. The sound from the speaker is equally thin, and the software doesn't allow for use with Pandora nor with MP3 tunes music locker. For the same price, the Grace wifi radio blows this away in both build quality and sound reproduction. On the plus side, I DO like the look of the radio, and set-up and implementation couldn't have been easier. I have used many a fine CCrane product over the years, really like the and support the company, and was hoping to be able to recommend this device, but unfortunately, cannot.
A very good Internet Radio November 13, 2008 PSG 7 out of 8 found this review helpful
I've had the CC Wifi Internet Radio for two weeks now. I had no problems setting it up with my Wireless network and it works quite well although it lacks an external Wifi antenna. It uses the Reciva database of radio stations (over 14,000 radio stations claimed)(www.reciva.com). Although using the single knob to scroll through lots of radio stations. They are organized by location or genre and its fun to search the world for interesting stations. Using your reciva.com account you can set up your favorite stations which show up on your radio (after you have registered it) under "My Stations". You can also add other streams under "My Streams". This radio is nice and compact and light (constructed of plastic). The display is only two lines which means you have to do a lot of scrolling through menus sometimes. It comes with a remote which is handy if you want to access more than 3 stations (up to 99 with the remote) you can store on 3 buttons on the front. These stations are stored locally rather than under your reciva account under "My Stations". It also will stream audio in various formats (MP3, Windows Media, Real, iTunes (non-protected), Ogg Vorbis and also with the new firmware FLAC files) from your PC or PnP device such as many Networked Attached Storage devices. In fact it works great with my Netgear ReadyNAS where I have all my music stored. I looked at the number of Internet/Wifi Radios and chose this one over the others because of two things: its small size and fact that it also has a wired Ethernet port as well as Wifi connectivity. Only issues are that it sometimes loses the Wifi connection (not an issue with a wired Ethernet connection) and some stations take more than a few seconds to buffer before you can listen to them.
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