Philips Streamium NP1100 review

Streaming audio receivers connect to your PC over a network and allow you to listen to music stored on it in more comfortable surroundings, such as your living room or garden.

They tend to be expensive, but Philips' Streamium NP1100 is reasonable at £99.

Speakers can be plugged into the headphone socket or phono ports. The Streamium is comparable in size to a paperback, but the 4 inch screen doesn't take advantage of all the space. The large onscreen text is legible up to three metres away, but you'll want to stand closer to use the menus, as the scrolling effect can make text look blurry. The remote is comfortable to hold, although some functions are clumsily implemented, such as searching your music by keyword. It's easy to mistype words on the mobile phone-style keypad, and bizarrely you can't delete mistyped characters.

We had no trouble connecting the Streamium to Ethernet and wireless networks. It won't work with iTunes, as is normal for a non-Apple product, but was instantly recognised by Windows Media Player 11. Music can be browsed by categories such as artist and album. If you prefer to organise your music using Windows Explorer, you can browse the contents of your Windows Music folder. We successfully played music in MP3 and WMA format, but AAC files only worked if they had a .m4a file extension, not .aac or .M4A.

If you tire of your own music collection, the Streamium can also receive thousands of Internet radio stations. The wide selection can be browsed by genre, language or country of origin, and you can easily bookmark your favourite stations for easy access. Any unlisted stations you discover for yourself online can only be added using a special Philips website, but this is better than using the remote's cumbersome text-entry keypad.

The Streamium NP1100 is straightforward to set up and use, and relatively cheap too. Apart from a few niggles, it's a great value streaming audio receiver.

Author: Alan Lu