Here comes Xmas. $140 for the music lover in your life. From my Amazon.com review, written hastily and submitted 11/6:
I've owned this Sanyo radio for 9 months now and will review it critically. I picked Sanyo because of its brand name. I've had no technical issues with the radio and have not needed Sanyo tech support. The radio works well.
Build: Solid. Ideal size...not too large or too small. Neat rectangle, fits squarely on the desk corner. Weighs about 2 lbs, perfect with rubber feet, no slipping.
Display: Backlit, easy to read.
Speakers: Internal speaker is reasonable for talk radio, sports. Has fair but not great volume. Strongly suggest using computer speakers through the headphone out jack. I have attached Harmon Kardon computer speakers with subwoofer and the sound is stereo, full, deep and rich. With external speakers, the volume is loud. I'm listening at 25% max volume here at my desk with it 4 feet from me, and it's plenty loud. Can turn up in big room at full volume with external speakers for great sound volume. It does not have red-black speaker wire jacks; only an headphone out type jack on the front (like your computer-thus you need computer speakers).
Sleep: Radio does have an Alarm Clock to wake you to internet radio, and a Sleep Timer to shut off automatically.
Stations: 10k as stated in the ad. Can be scrolled by alphabetical order, by Location (e.g. your favorite city) or Genre of music. For those that know XM Sirrius, it has the same types of categories (the decades, hard rock, heavy metal, country, folk, kids, Latin and on and on). Also can search by call letters (e.g. WKIM-FM 98.9) or country of origin. I see, scrolling now, Guam, Viet Nam, Samoa, Argentina, and dozens and dozens more.
Remote Control: Tiny, small buttons, not back lighted, but functional. All buttons same size, so you really have to stare at it to see which button is scroll up, down, volume. Can access the saved stations setting from it, though. I use it frequently. Very basic. Buttons should be better marked and larger. The whole remte should be larger.
Memory Stations: Has 8 saved station presets. Eight! For 10k+ station menu! I bet I could easily find 30-40 stations that I enjoy on a regular basis in various genres-but it lets me save eight. Silly. Frankly, this alone (plus the so-so remote control) cost this radio one star in my overall review. My car radio has more memory preset stations than this Sanyo. What you'll end up doing is writing down the stations you like on a 3x5 card and keeping it by the radio and manually tuning to the stations you wish to hear. There is not keyboard input, so it's unfortunately indirect access... you hit Station Select, then scroll through the call letters to find your station of choice. Takes about 1 minute every time you wish to get to the station you desire (unless it's one of the eight stations in the memory, in which case it's instant from one of the eight preset buttons on the body of the radio and on the remote control).
Internet Wi-Fi: Impressive. I use a standard Linksys internet blue box and can put this radio anywhere in the house and have streamed music or news instantly. When the radio is first turned on, it takes about 40 seconds to link to the Wi-Fi system each time...going to whatever station you last listened to automatically. From then on, no hics or skips. Know how frustrating it can be listening to internet radio on the computer and having it stop periodically for "buffering" midway through a song? Never has happened to me even once in hours of listening to the Sanyo. Perhaps it would happen to someone with a slower internet service, but with my cable internet, Linksys Wi-Fi, once connected, no glitches. Smooth sound. I wonder if the buffering on a computer is due to the computer doing more than one thing at a time as one uses the computer for many functions simultaneously, whereas this is a dedicated radio server.
Computer Radio: Why not just listen to radio through my computer? (1) Not portable--this radio is self contained and completely portable. Just plug it in and rock out.
(2) This radio is more smooth, no "buffering". (3) Although I'm sure the internet has a software website server with 10k stations and presets, why bother? Boom-one click and this baby is on, whether your computer is on of not. (4) No computer necessary. (5) Remote control. (6) Can use as alarm clock.
I am a tech lover yet tech challenged. I took this Sanyo radio out of the box, plugged it in, and hit "on" and that was it. It automatically connected to the internet and was ready to go. I browsed the stations I liked and hit save memory for the eight I enjoyed most, just like a car radio. It has international stations and local stations. It doesn't have every station known to man--I like, for instance, Stephen King's radio in Maine, and although that's available online, it's not on here for some reason. This radio is linked to Reciva, some radio distribution service, but you pay no fee and it's seamless--not ads or anything. Reciva and Sanyo must have some deal. They have a Reciva website (Google Reciva), so see if your station is available; check it out, they have quite an extensive list. For a sports lover looking to hear your fav teams, for niche music lovers, for news junkies, this radio is all you need. I felt motivated to write a review after owning it for several months. I would definitely buy it again and highly recommend it to a friend. Hook it to computer speakers for a very full and smooth sound. G'luck and happy internet radio listening.
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