We have an Amazon Echo, and a couple of Dots elsewhere.

While they’re good for some stuff, the radio will randomly cut out and it’s driving me mad. Signal seems OK and a phone on Tune-In or BBC Sounds will carry on without issues.

– so I’d advise caution with them. Maybe the Google things are better?

Have an old Evoke Flow but the screen dimmed over the years, I replaced it & it’s dimmed again. Software updates were also annoying – it would stop working until you attached it to the PC, downloaded & installed the update.

Wondering now about just having a speaker and driving content off the phone. Either that or a super-simple radio.

I’ve yet to see a smart speaker for less than about £150-200

You’ve not looked all that hard for a few years then. As CraigW says, you can get both Amazon or Google devices for less than your £60 DAB radio. An Echo Dot is £25 currently.

I would find it difficult to recommend to anyone who just wants DAB stations pay more than I did.

Aside from your cost argument being moot, yes, if you “just” want DAB stations then sure. Or with a smart speaker you can play DAB stations, BBC Sounds, Apple Music, Spotify, TuneIn (free radio from around the world), and many more. Or you can pair it to your phone via bluetooth and stream your extensive iTunes library to it.

And that’s just music playback, one of many things it can do.

I’m perfectly capable of turning a bloody radio on and off, I don’t need it to be ‘smart’

You sound like my dad back when I was a kid, when he was buying a TV and I was excitedly badgering him into getting one with a new-fangled remote control.

Or with a smart speaker you can play DAB stations, BBC Sounds, Apple Music, Spotify, TuneIn (free radio from around the world), and many more

Its a bit shit at playing dab radio without an internet connection.

The joy of radio is it doesn’t need an internet connection.

We’ve had one of these in the kitchen for quite a few years now Old Bose Wave and a John Lewis DAB radio alarm clock for the bedroom. They work for what we want in those rooms although if I was buying a digital radio / tuner device for a room these days I would be tempted to go for a some sort of streaming or Bluetooth speaker as they are a lot more versatile. Hundreds of radio stations to choose from although the quality does vary quite a lot and doesn’t come close to having even a reasonable hi fi. In the study I just use my laptop to stream (usually Spotify) and use these Bluetooth speakers (R1700BT which I really like. Mrs BC has an AudioPro Bluetooth speaker she streams to from her iPad and then, attached to the hifi I have a Pioneer streamer which I will sometimes use to tune into radio stations.

Just blow the budget and get a Raurk R1, you’ll thank me.

Had three Pure’s over the last 10 years. Two developed issues within a couple of years – eg. won’t go below a certain volume. Latest one had some dead pixels on the display but wasn’t bothered enough to get it replaced.

I may regret this, but…

with a smart speaker you can play DAB stations, BBC Sounds, Apple Music, Spotify, TuneIn (free radio from around the world), and many more. Or you can pair it to your phone via bluetooth and stream your extensive iTunes library to it.

And that’s just music playback, one of many things it can do.

With a DAB radio with Bluetooth and my phone I do all that. Like you say, that’s music playback sorted (and a ‘dumb’ Bluetooth speaker would obviously be enough, but just switching the radio on to listen to R6M, its primary use, is easy enough). What are the many other things that a smart speaker will do? If we’re talking stuff like switching on lights remotely, them I’m out…

I’ve tried or still have a number of those mentioned above but the best so far is a boxy mono JLP own label one for about £80 two years ago. I’d be cautious about buying style over quality.

Its a bit shit at playing dab radio without an internet connection.

The joy of radio is it doesn’t need an internet connection.

A DAB radio is bit shit at playing dab radio without radio reception.

The joy of a smart speaker is it doesn’t need radio reception.

(-:

What are the many other things that a smart speaker will do?

In honesty, not much. I was comparing a smart speaker to a radio rather than to a phone / BT speaker combo. I was thinking things like listening to podcasts, playing games, general googlesque things like asking it “Alexa, what time does ASDA close?” and, yes, home automation. But you can do all of those things on your phone, of course.

In your use case, what you’re adding is convenience. I could find my phone, unlock it, load up the BBC Sounds app, switch to 6 Music and assuming that the speaker is powered up and already paired it’ll work; or alternatively I can say “Alexa, play 6 Music.”

Because it’s using Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth there isn’t a 1:1 relationship between devices. If I go into a different room I don’t need to reconnect my phone to a different speaker. If I go out, my girlfriend can listen to Lawnmower Deth or Des O’Connor without needing to pair her phone to it first.

We have a Pure Evoke 2S upstairs connected to the HiFi.

Brilliant thing. Sounds great on it’s own, FM is excellent through the external amp, DAB is as good as it can be.
Built before Pure build quality went a bit shonky.

We have a Pure Pop Maxi in the kitchen, it’s ok.

I like radios. Next purchase will be one of the retro Roberts internet jobbies.

We’ve got a few – pretty much all the rooms we listen to radio have DAB. Theres a mono white plastic Pure that had a ‘soft touch’ finish that went sticky and is now impossible to clean.

The Tivoli that’s in the bedroom (and one in the bathroom) look and sound great.
There’s DAB on the Yamaha amp in Kitchen. We had an Alexa for a year but unplugged it when we went on holiday and never bothered plugging it back in.

For me the advantage of DAB is, usually, press one button to get what you want to listen to. No flaky voice commands, no faffing with your phone. On. Off. It’s also near enough in sync if it’s on in multiple rooms.

Reception obviously depends where you are. There’s an external aerial that’s connected to some of them but some work without even the rod aerial extended (and DAB has always been rock solid in the car for me way beyond mobile coverage areas).

In your use case, what you’re adding is convenience. I could find my phone, unlock it, load up the BBC Sounds app, switch to 6 Music and assuming that the speaker is powered up and already paired it’ll work; or alternatively I can say “Alexa, play 6 Music.”

…or I can press the power button on the radio and it’s playing 6 Music (or maybe R4, it’s secondary use case).

This, basically:

For me the advantage of DAB is, usually, press one button to get what you want to listen to. No flaky voice commands, no faffing with your phone. On. Off.

It’s also near enough in sync if it’s on in multiple rooms.

Er, yeah, to be fair that’s not always the case in the morning when R4 is on a Bluetooth speaker via my phone in the bathroom, an FM (I know!) radio in the bedroom and DAB in the kitchen. Get your journey around the house in the right order and you can hear the news headlines three times 🙂

We have a Pure Evoke 1S for kitchen radio duties. Its a good few years old now but has been faultless and is perfectly suited for what it is used for. Not available any more but if the newer versions are as good then you probably wouldn’t go far wrong with one.

We also have a Sonos One (free gift with a mobile phone) used for Spotify around the house but tend not to use the voice control preferring to use it via a mobile. We have a JBL Charge 3 which is good for the same thing but is rechargeable so handy for in the garden.

None of our three would satisfy a hifi buff but would recommend any of them for anyone else.

We’ve ditched all ours in favour of various Echo things plugged into hifi equipment. But even the £30 echo dot sounds far superior to most dedicated DAB radios I’ve heard.

…or I can press the power button on the radio and it’s playing 6 Music (or maybe R4, it’s secondary use case).

I explained why I considered a smart speaker to be a better investment than a DAB radio and someone said “I can do all that with my phone.” So I explained the advantages over a phone / BT pair and now you’re back to using radios to poke holes in that argument.

The advantage of a smart speaker over a radio is versatility. The advantage of a smart speaker over a phone / BT speaker combo is convenience. The advantage of a DAB radio is it doesn’t need an Internet connection and has buttons on it.

But even the £30 echo dot sounds far superior to most dedicated DAB radios I’ve heard.

Devices aside, I’ve found the sound quality of DAB varies quite widely between stations. I had to stop listening to Kerrang Radio as it sounded like it was being played down the phone. (That and their entire weekly playlist was about four songs.)

I explained why I considered a smart speaker to be a better investment than a DAB radio and someone said “I can do all that with my phone.” So I explained the advantages over a phone / BT pair and now you’re back to using radios to poke holes in that argument.

Sorry, my response came across slightly pissier than I intended.

I think we’re agreeing though that it all depends on the (shoot me) use case. If what one wants to do is listen to a limited number of radio stations (because I’d put money that most people spend most of their radio time listening to one or two stations), then a DAB radio is all you need.

Smart speakers by all means allow you to do more, but often, especially on here, people looking for recommendations just want to do the thing that the thing does. It’s like someone asking for a recommendation for a corkscrew and being told to buy a swiss army knife.

I suppose it’s the BA in me asking “what are you going to do with the thing you want?”, and you’re the ITDev-type who’s jumping straight to the overcomplicated technical solution 😉

What we need here is cartoon of a swing…

I’ve yet to see a smart speaker for less than about £150-200

Wha…?

The Echo Dot, mentioned above, is currently £29.

I bought two of them in the Amazon pre-chrimbo sale for £44 for the pair!

(Edit: apologies, already covered, hadn’t realised there was a page 2! 😚)

Sorry, my response came across slightly pissier than I intended.

It felt more like moving the goalposts than ‘pissy’ TBH. ‘s cool.

What we need here is cartoon of a swing…

🤣

It’s like I said earlier, sometimes the question posed isn’t the right question. The question posed by the OP was asking what radios people have, but the question they should be asking instead (and the one I answered) is “what’s the best way of listening to Radio 6 in the kitchen?”

And perhaps the answer to that is in fact “a DAB radio,” but it would be remiss of us not to consider other options before arriving at that conclusion.

It’s also near enough in sync if it’s on in multiple rooms.

On the Echo Dots you can set up groups so you can say, for instance, “Alexa, play songs by Des O’Connor on the Upstairs group” and they will all play the same thing in perfectly sync.

It’s like someone asking for a recommendation for a corkscrew and being told to buy a swiss army knife.

I think it is more like someone asking for a recommendation for a mechanical typewriter and being told to buy a laptop.

I suppose it’s the BA in me asking “what are you going to do with the thing you want?”, and you’re the ITDev-type who’s jumping straight to the overcomplicated technical solution 😉

The overcomplicated technical solution is build your own smart speaker/internet radio using a Raspberry Pi and Linux.

It is a bit annoying that most smart speakers don’t have proper buttons. Would be great if could configure a few buttons for shortcuts. eg one for 6 Music, one for Spotify, one for the weather etc. Instead of shouting at it all the time.

A “perform default action” button would be neat, that’s a good idea.

What irritates me with it is you can’t separate out functions from the app. Like, I use it for shopping lists, I add stuff during the day as I run out of stuff then pull up the list on my phone screen in store. To do that I’ve to open the app, wait for it to load up, go into Lists, select “shopping list” then wait for that to load and sync. It’d be ace if the list could just be a homescreen button, or better yet a widget. Seems an oversight to me, that.

The advantage of a smart speaker over a radio is versatility

Somewhat ironic really that one of the reasons I’ve stuck with a radio over a smart dohicky is the versatility of the radio.

Going away in my van – chuck in the radio.

Going away with the tent. Chuck in the radio

Going to the bottom of the garden to do some works where there’s no internet. Take the radio.

Why would anyone voluntarily go where there is no internet?? 😲

Ruark R1 here, looks & sounds fantastic.
Beautifully made, digital, FM & Bluetooth.
Lovely piece of kit.

Edit. typed all this before checking the current price. If you stretch to it you won’t be disappointed.

It’s like someone asking for a recommendation for a corkscrew and being told to buy a swiss army knife.

It’s like someone asking for a recommendation for a corkscrew and being told to buy a waiter’s knife. They’d get a perfectly functional corkscrew, a knife for cutting the foil, a bottle opener, and it all fits neatly in a pocket. It’s something that the question-asker might not have considered, might not even know exists, and for the purposes of this analogy we can consider it to be at a similar price point to other corkscrews. What’s not to like?

And of course, depending on the intended usage, this might actually be a poor recommendation. If it’s to go behind a bar serving lots of bottles maybe an electric one would be better suited. Or it could be a gift, or be used by someone with joint mobility issues, or it turns out that all their wine has screw caps…

One thing I’ve learned from spending decades in and around tech support is that people are really, really bad at asking questions. Techs asking “why?” is a critical support skill. If someone asks for a blank CD is the better answer “sure, here you go” or is it “WTF do you want a blank CD for in 2020?” It could be that there is a actually a genuine use case for it, but it’d be negligent not to check to see if there’s a better way of doing whatever they’re trying to achieve.

“We’ve always done it this way” is the bane of my existence, it’s absolute the worst reason to do anything.

One thing I’ve learned from spending decades in and around tech support is that people are really, really bad at asking questions. Techs asking “why?” is a critical support skill.

Abso-totally agree, from decades in and around the business end of IT development.

Just to be fair though, neither of us actually asked why he wanted the radio 🙂

Another Ruark R1 here, which I’ve refrained from recommending as it’s over the OP’s budget.
I generally like technology, but there is no way I’m going to use Alexa or Siri or Google Assistant. So the R1 is perfect for me. DAB, FM and Bluetooth with excellent quality. It does 6 Music and R4, I think it has some other stations but I’ve never tried.

It does 6 Music and R4, I think it has some other stations but I’ve never tried.

We are all so predictable on here. My Tivoli radio in the bedroom has two alarms on it. The first plays R4 from 0659 to 745 (just before thought for the day) at which point the second alarm switches it to 6music. Do I win a prize?

One thing I’ve learned from spending decades in and around tech support is that people are really, really bad at asking questions. Techs asking “why?” is a critical support skill.

And yet you didn’t ask why either?

No dab coverage here. Sniff ..

Just blow the budget and get a Raurk R1, you’ll thank me.

ive never really understood why the portable DAB market is so resistant to the notion of ‘stereo’

£20 goodmans dab radio thing, its mono but sounds ok, gets thrown in toolbox,getting rained on , falling in muddy ditches and cable chambers,and still on same BT supplied pre flattened AA batts

The advantage of a DAB radio is it doesn’t need an Internet connection and has buttons on it.

Having moved over to a Google Mini, I consider the lack of buttons to be a big advantage. I listen to the radio when fixing my bike, doing DIY, making the tea…

My internet connection is also more stable than the DAB signal in my house.

I spent ages deciding what radio for the kitchen. The wife said no to a WiFi speaker and I wasn’t disappointed. They may work for you but on the end I wanted that robust simple solution.

So the Pure went, it never sounded that good. Replaced by a Ruark R2. Not the £440 but a used mk1 off eBay for £85. It’s been great. I connect my phone to it with a wire. We have had loads of blue tooth speakers. They have never been 100% reliable

More shocking is that we no have R1 the bedroom. Cosmetic second. Love it

Roberts Play, 2 of them. and a big Roberts in the kitchen.

There’s a Pure on beside the bed, but the sound quality is awful, so rarely used for more than checking the time.

I like the Play as the sound is nice and they are rechargeale, with normal off the shelf AA rechargable batteries, no expensive proprietory battery pack thing going on.

Us them in the bathroom mostly, but nice to have something that I can take around the house. Full charge of battery lasts at least 2-3 weeks.

I connect my phone to it with a wire. We have had loads of blue tooth speakers. They have never been 100% reliable

I bought a chifibluetooth headphone adaptor for <£6

It’s rechargeable but it’s actually used permanently connected to a phone charger to add bluetooth to an old stereo. Surprisingly it’s been 100% reliable.

Good one. I hadn’t seen one that cheap. I’ve nothing against blue tooth. But I do like the option of a wire

Well my Pure Evoke CD4 arrived, looks good, sounds good and is now broken as Radio cuts out every 5 minutes so off it goes for a refund. Pants.