Orange LiveRadio review

The Orange LiveRadio is one of those gadgets that draws comment before you switch it on.

With its off-white finish and simple curves, it owes as much to 1970s science fiction movies as the latest Apple designs. In the office, some of us thought it looked cool, while others weren't convinced.

Anyway, go beyond the divisive design and there's a good range of features lurking within the LiveRadio. First among these is the handy connection with Orange's music download service. If you like a song that you hear, it's easy to bookmark the track. Later, you can visit the Orange website and download your selected songs to both your PC and your phone for 99p each. That's a little pricey, but at least you don't have to fiddle about and get around annoying copy protection to transfer music from your PC onto your phone.

The rest of the features are pretty standard. There's an alarm, a USB port that you could use to connect an mp3 player, and an audio output if you want to use external speakers. Eight Internet radio stations can be stored as presets, and the LiveRadio can connect to any wireless network that you have available.

When we tried connecting to a couple of different WiFi routers, our only complaint was that the LiveRadio was slow to set up the link. While it quickly scanned and flagged up a list of available networks and their varying strengths, actually connecting often took quite a while.

Once we were connected, audio quality was as we expected. Like many portable radios of all varieties, the LiveRadio sounded a bit tinny, lacking the bass that you'd get from a larger set of speakers. However, as a tiny unit that will sit unobtrusively on a desk or kitchen counter, it's acceptable, and no worse than others we've tested.

If you don't mind having to wait a while each time it connects to your network, the LiveRadio is one of the better Internet radios around. Given the number of models now available in this price bracket, the appeal of the music download service will probably be the deciding factor.