Armour Home Electronics Q2 Internet Radio review

It has to be said that the Q2 Internet Radio is one of the most refreshingly different and interesting internet radios that we've ever seen. Beyond its cool cube design (available in five colours), this radio is the only model we've ever seen not to have a single button on it, bar a power switch on the rear.

Instead, the Q2 Internet Radio is designed to be used entirely with its accelerometer. You tip it back to turn up volume, forwards to turn volume down and place it speaker down to mute it and put it in standby mode. It can be programmed with your four favourite stations or podcasts, and you simply place the Q2 on the correct side to get the assigned station. Each side is marked with lines from one to four, so it's easy to see which preset you're using.

Programming the radio is simple. All you have to do is download the software from the Q2 website and plug the radio in via USB. The software's first tab lets you drag and drop radio stations or podcasts into the four available preset slots. You can search for radio stations or browse by country or genre, where genres are further divided into country to make finding the one you want.

We couldn't find any UK radio stations missing from the list and there's a massive range of foreign radio stations to pick from. In short, no matter what you like listening to you're bound to find the station you want.

Next, you click the Networks tab where you can select up to five wireless networks to use, stored in order of preference. If the network you're connecting to is protected you're asked for the password when you select it. Note that you can't use a wireless network that requires authentication through a hotspot, such as in a hotel or other hotspot.

We also noticed that the Q2 isn't correctly configured to work in the UK and wouldn't detect wireless networks running on channels 12 or 13 (UK networks can run on channels 1 to 13). To get our Q2 working we had to change our router's wireless channel to one in the US range of 1 to 11, although a firmware update coming soon should fix this. The only other minor problem is that you can't manually add networks, so if you've turned off SSID broadcast on your router you'll need to turn it back on in order to see and connect to the network. Finally, you can use the Settings tab to select an initial listening volume, update firmware and undo recent changes.