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Sangean WFR-20 WiFi Internet Radio & Media Player by Sangean
Digital Photo Product DetailsManufacturer: Sangean Model: WFR-20 Color: High-gloss piano black Product features: - Wired or wireless connection
- Infrared remote control
- Large, easy to read 3 line display
- High quality full-range stereo speakers
- Play your music collection from your computer
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Sangean WFR-20 WiFi Internet Radio & Media PlayerCustomer Review: Excellent Radio Summary: 5 Stars
My radio arrived last week. It is my first wifi radio and I had waited a long time before purchasing in order to do as much research as possible and read all the available reviews. I'm very glad I finally took the plunge.
The radio set itself up, pretty much as advertised, right out of the box. I did have a brief unknown problem finding an IP address or something, but it worked itself out when I restarted the radio by unplugging and plugging back in.
My results have been great. This radio basically brings the world of radio right to your home without the antenna systems, signal fade, and interference problems of shortwave and with high quality clear audio. And, it offers the thousands of stations and streams that you'd never be able to recieve on a shortwave radio.
While I appreciate having one-button operation on the radio, I do find it convenient to have the remote control handy in order to use the "back" button and to navigate up and down in menus while listening to a station. If you want to go "back" in a menu using the radio itself, it can sometimes take awhile to get where you need to be, and if you want to look for other stations while listening to another, using the radio button requires you to start at the top and then dive back down into the menus. With the remote, you can explore the stations in the same subcategory listed before and after the station you are listening to at the press of a single button. If you are the type who just wants to find your favorite stations and spend less time searching around eventually, this would become less of an issue. The remote also seems to have good range across a room. The battery for the remote was included.
The radio only has 12 presets, and it really should have more. But, this is not really a problem because if you register with [...], you can add an unlimited amount of stations (at least I haven't hit a limit yet) to your "My stations" folder. In effect, this list becomes your presets, and though there are a few extra steps to get to the list of "My Stations" as compared to accessing a preset station, it's not inconvenient to access these at any time. Anytime I find an intersting station while tuning around, I make a note to add it to "My stations" from the website later.
I have had very few occasions where a station didn't connect, and that is probably just because it is offline at that time. The sound quality is awesome. My radio has never been more than about 50 feet from my linksys broadband router (with cable internet) and I have had almost no problems with buffering, the notable exception being with BBC1, which, ironically, is the station that comes preset in preset 1 on the radio. I believe this has to do with the BBC1 stream; I know BBC1 is their most popular stream and I imagine that many people are trying to use it at the same time.
I have had a couple of experiences with an "internal error" message mentioned in other reviews. I don't know why this happens, but after about 20-30 seconds, the radio resets itself and reconnects to whatever I was listening to at the time. Really not a big deal for me so far, and as I said before, I've never had a perfect radio.
My media player function works really well and it is a pleasure to hear all the music stored on the computer through such quality speakers. The only problem I have had is with podcasts. To me, this is an extra feature anyway, so not a big deal, but when I try to stream podcasts from "my podcasts" which are saved in my profile at [...], the stream always stops at some point. Eevntually, the stream starts over but there is no way to fast forward to the point at which it stopped, so as far as my experience goes, the podcast feature is not a selling point on the radio.
All in all, I am very pleased with the unit and highly recommend it. It does everything I expected it to and more, and what it does, it does better than I had hoped.
Description of Sangean WFR-20 WiFi Internet Radio & Media PlayerListen to over 10,000 Internet Radio Stations and stored media, wireless or wired, fulll range stereo spkrs., The Sangean WFR-20 Wi-Fi Internet Radio offers direct access to over 6,000 internet radio stations and 21,242 on-demand streams in 250 locations from 60 genres. This allows you to drill down your search quickly and conveniently from your radio. You can also use your favorite web browser and a computer to search for specific stations and upload those stations to your radios. The "MY Stations" folder allows quick and easy access to your most desired stations. Don't find your favorite internet station on the list? Just submit the station to the website and it will be researched and added to the list, available for all of the current 14,000+ subscribers. Don't have a computer? Not a problem with the WFR-20. It still provides you access to the same internet radio stations and is designed to work as a completely independent stand alone unit anywhere in your home, office or dorm. All you need is a broadband internet connection and a wired or wireless router. Used in conjunction with your wired/wireless networked computer and Windows Media Player you have full access to your digital media library using the UPnP Server, or simply your Microsoft Shared File Folder function in MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, Real Media, and AIFF formats.
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