Dedicated
internet radios have always been niche products; when you can get all the same content on your desktop, laptop or even smartphone, it's hard to see the point of relying on WiFi. Without a traditional FM antenna,
they're many are chained to your network -- if not your wall -- and the lack of keyboard input for setup and channel search furthers their plight. Even so, there must be something to it, as this gadget category refuses to die, so we thought we'd give one promising newcomer a good, thorough try. The
Grace Digital Allegro caught our attention with a packed feature list (including Pandora) and a clean, mobile design. Did it enthrall or disappoint? Find out after the break.
Presentation
In pictures, the Allegro looks like a sizable, professionally-built audio component; in reality, it's neither. That's bad if you were expecting a box
made of wood,
metal or glass rather than plastic, but we certainly didn't for the $170 asking price. On the other hand, the box's small stature is a bonus: barely bigger than a few paperbacks side by side, it's quite portable, and looks fantastic on a modern bookshelf. The flimsy cover over the six AA batteries allowing for that portability didn't impress us, but we found the unit pretty solid otherwise, and it sounded excellent for its size. Turning the speakers up to
11 max volume produced some distortion, but the tiny box still managed to fill the room with crisp, nuanced audio from a pair of full-range speakers, and the device has a 3.5mm line-out (though sadly no auxiliary line-in) if you'd rather use your own. Two rear-facing ports give the speakers enough oomph for a little bit of bass, but it won't be shaking your bookcase, let alone the floor, and they make it impractical to set the unit on its back (you'd be covering the ports), which detracts from portability. Not that you'll be carrying the Allegro around much, anyhow. While you can slot in rechargeable
Ni-MH cells and even charge them via AC, the six alkalines we used were drained in well under six hours of activity. If you keep it plugged in, however, it's a capable little machine, streaming pleasant-sounding internet radio, Pandora,
SIRIUS and Live365 plus files shared via Windows or UPnP server (TVersity worked great with lossless FLAC and OGG) right from your PC.
Interface
It's a cryin' shame that 'capable little machine' is held back by one of the crappiest, most counter-intuitive user interfaces we've ever had the misfortune to behold. If you're familiar with
Reciva-based radios, you already have some inkling of what we're talking about -- a tiny, 15-character monochrome display with deep, nested menus burying all the controls -- but the Allegro also has the dubious distinction of having three different control schemes, each with their own critical flaws. The IR remote is by far the best with 10 programmable presets and dedicated Pandora buttons, though you'll need eagle eyes to read the display across a room. Besides, what seems like simple two-axis menu navigation isn't; though the up / down directional buttons do move up and down through each layer of menus, the left / right keys only do the same until the machine starts playing your tunes; from that point on, 'right' only mutes. The hardware dial and buttons on top of the unit are great for controlling volume, but horrible at moving through menus; you have to physically depress the large, clicky dial whenever you make a selection. Here, there are also no Pandora controls, so you're out of luck if you lose that IR remote.
Last and most assuredly least is Grace Digital's iPhone app. While the iPhone's large screen dwarfs that of the Allegro, allowing you to actually read radio station titles and providing streaming Pandora album art, the software is a royal PITA to use -- laid out in no logical order we could discern -- and is actually overruled by its physical counterparts. That means if you put the radio in sleep mode, the app stops responding to input, and if you mute it with the IR remote, you can't undo that with the iPhone controls. Oh, and the iPhone app doesn't have standard media control buttons, unless they were buried under a layer of obfuscation we were unable to penetrate.
That splash screen is a lie. While we're at it, you should probably know that none of these three control schemes have any way to stop or pause Pandora (or internet radio) playback. Those
stop, pause, backwards and forwards buttons are only for PC streaming control. If you want audio to cease, your only option is to mute.
Wrap-up
Over the course of an afternoon spent swearing at Grace Digital's Allegro and poring through the instruction manual to find out why feature X or control Y wouldn't simply do as we asked, we actually began to feel a familial sort of bond with the device -- something about shared adversity, no doubt -- and managed to settle in for a soothing hour or two of Pandora bliss after painstakingly entering the WiFi encryption key, registering the radio, linking our account and learning the antiquated UI. But we could have done the same with our PC or even smartphone in far less time, and with a device like this the onus is on the manufacturer to make it an
easier experience. That didn't happen, and for $170 there's no way we'd recommend the Allegro to any but the most patient individuals willing to trade function for form.
posted May 6th 2010 12:05PM
Allegro, I am dissapoint.
Thanks for the review though, I'd like you to introduce a segment calles 'Smashgadget' on the next show, where you can destroy the crappy tech you've encountered during the month. 'Endgadget' would be a great title, too.
@TheAmazingWJV
BTW, I miss a button 'calles' Edit post.
Squeezebox Radio >>> Grace Digital Allegro
@UnclePhil No, it goes like this:
Pure Sensia >> Revo Ikon >>>>>Logitech Squeezebox > V-Tech IS9181 >>>>>Grace "anything" >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Chumby
Engadget needs to start reviewing the GOOD stand-alone wifi radios before passing judgment on the whole genre. How about testing one by PURE or REVO for a change, instead of the drecky brands?
@darex
Err, why are you telling him he is wrong in his claim that the Logitech Squeezebox is better than the Grace Radio radio, when you are effectively agreeing with him?
//How about testing one by PURE or REVO for a change, instead of the drecky brands?//
Because neither the Pure nor the Revo radios are available in America, can't test what you don't have folks
@darex you'll also need to separate these by budget. no way i'm paying $300-500 for the revo/pure, when the squeezebox radio at $150 works just as well as the grace allegro.
"Without a traditional FM antenna..."
Funny, my Grace GDI-IRP600 has an FM antenna in addition to the wifi. AND I can take it pretty much anywhere, since in addition to taking AC power, it will run for ~12 hours or so on 6 AA batteries.
At least I'm not the only one not understanding this product category...
Grace just makes crappy stuff and LOTS of it. Why would you expect this to be any different? Seems like pure half-assery to me.
@BigHam - actually, Grace is a well known pro-audio manufacturer and their stuff is very high end. reading this review sounds the exact opposite of every Grace product I have ever used which is a real shame...
@nicc nevermind...I was confusing this with Grace Designs (http://www.gracedesign.com/) I've never heard of this Grace Digital Audio company before.
The UI is dead! Long live the UI!
How ironic that that Apple, which is so centered on making the UI king, now hosts the crappy Grace UI in the iPhone app! Way to work-around the good stuff, Grace.
Might as well buy a nice phone or tablet such as Archos or HTC Inredible and download a radio app!
check it out http://www.xiialive.com
You just haven't used a good one yet.
My bedside radio and the one in my bathroom don't travel much. I love them both, and they do a fantastic job of providing me with tunes and news as I go about my business. Yes, a smart phone or laptop CAN do the same functions, but life with those in either setting would totally suck. Sometimes, purposefully-designed devices just work and work well. The "product" refuses to die for the same reason that "radio" refuses to die. These are like magical fantasy radios, one could only dream off until now. How is that a niche product? If so, I can't think of anyone who wouldn't fit into that niche.
These are great, by the way, for situations when your tiny iPhone speaker isn't great. Grace's products often look a but kludgey, but they generally sound quite good. I use my IRP600 on the deck where I don't have stereo speakers set up, and it works great.
Roku Radio
Great little internet radio that even gets FM/AM and has a logical interface.
Excellent sound too - I'd recommend it over the Allegro any day!
Is it just me, or does the "Grace" logo look amazingly similar to the "Oracle" logo? Same font style, etc.. And it doesn't hurt that the names share many of the same letters in the same order..
I will be getting the Solo, but not for personal use. It will be for my retail store, and all I would need to do is set it to one station (or Pandora) and leave it. That way my audio system isn't dependent on a PC. I think in that situation it will be great. But for personal use, there is no need for it, just use your phone or computer.
When I first looked at that picture I thought OMG... Oracle have made a NAS box! O_o how wrong was I... logos are so similar from a distance.
A screen like that on a $170 device is crime against nature. I don't care what the thing does, that display just screams, "Hey, I was designed in 1985!". When will these guys learn that sphinctering data through a 16x4 line mono LCD, with the accompanying hair-pulling layers of menus, is worse than stabbing forks in your eyes. I can only conclude that Grace is really a lawn sprinkler controller company looking for new markets.
I agree with the reviewer. The sound is great and so is the remote and FREE iPhone app. I got mine for $149.99 on amazon and bought rechargeable batteries from radio shack and move this guy from room to room.. ( allegro has a built in recharge circuit so you never have to take them out).
One thing he got wrong was the iPhone app not being able to turn the radio on. According to the description on iTunes you just have to turn the radio's wi-fi standby feature 'on'. Then the iPhone controls everything on the radio, including turning it on/ off from any room and thumbs up/ down and skip Pandora songs...
The radio even has NOAA radio weather and NPR stations organized in a folder at the bottom of the Internet radio menu... Pretty cool.
I agree with the reviewer. The sound is great and so is the remote and FREE iPhone app. I got mine for $149.99 on amazon and bought rechargeable batteries from radio shack and move this guy from room to room.. ( allegro has a built in recharge circuit so you never have to take them out).
One thing he got wrong was the iPhone app not being able to turn the radio on. According to the description on iTunes you just have to turn the radio's wi-fi standby feature 'on'. Then the iPhone controls everything on the radio, including turning it on/ off from any room and thumbs up/ down and skip Pandora songs...
The radio even has NOAA radio weather and NPR stations organized in a folder at the bottom of the Internet radio menu... Pretty cool.
One of the big points of having a WiFi radio is power. I have a Revo Blik and love it. Good sound quality, bad meus, looks fantastic. Even at full volume it consumes only 9W and about 4W at normal volume. I don't want to run my PC which eats over 120W just sitting still and can only sit in my office. I have a NC10 but even that is 17-20W. And on a mobile? Please! The battery would be dead within a few hours (i know, have tried) and then you either have to use headphones (not very social) or connect to external speakers (more power).
So yes, maybe a WiFi radio is a little niche, but it does have somethings to set it apart from. Low power, easy to move between rooms (even if teatherd to a wall for power), 1000's of stations more then FM (I hate nearly all of my local stations and the BBC radio). The two problems for me are the bad menu structure (for a 2x16 screen) and the way it sometimes drops out of connection, even though it is connected to the network and has internet, something that can't be said about FM admitadly.