Pure Digital Bug review

Digital radio is like eating five pieces of fruit and veg a day. The government tries to promote it, everyone knows it's a good idea, and maybe one day we'll all get round to doing something about it.

The Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) system won't provide you with your daily allowance of vitamin C - the benefits are better sound quality (even if the signal's not great) and a wider choice of channels. There are five digital-only BBC channels and, depending on where you live, you could receive many extra commercial ones.

The Pure Bug is a DAB radio that has some features designed to work with your PC. The wacky design (courtesy of fashion designer Wayne Hemingway) is an acquired taste, but the stalk-mounted display is genuinely useful - you can angle it to suit whatever you're doing.

The Bug's radio functions work well. Like all DAB radios, it's smart enough to set its own clock, and download station names - it even remembers them if you unplug it. It can pause and rewind live radio (within a five-minute buffer), but the really clever stuff starts when you insert an SD memory card. You can record manually or use the timer - you have to record in MP2 format (which will play back in iTunes, but needs converting to MP3 to work on iPods and other MP3 players) at original broadcast quality (usually 128Kbit/s, which fills SD cards at about a megabyte a minute). You can fill a card with MP3s - either by transferring it to your PC's memory card reader, or via USB -and the Bug will play them. This all works well, but it's limited - you can't fast-forward or rewind stored tracks, although there is a downloadable software upgrade to enable this.

You could get an internal DAB tuner card for about £60 or less, but the Bug works on its own and should be more reliable than a PC. There are enough minor flaws to just cost it an award, though. The controls feel tacky, and for some functions you have to switch awkwardly between the stalk buttons and those on the body. An option to record to MP3 for portable use would have been nice. The slightly tinny built-in speakers don't do justice to DAB broadcasts - although there are audio outputs to connect to a better set. And why did they put the SD card slot and headphone jack on the back? Answers on a postcard please Wayne.