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MagicBox Imp Radio

Thanks to John McGrath for sending me this radio for review.

First up in this double review is the stand-alone Imp Radio, based on the same technology as the Acoustic Energy Wifi Radio, but with a lower price tag.
The unit itself is extremely well made and feels like it could take the sort of abuse a kitchen radio should be able to withstand (although I didn’t try this myself).
The case is real metal, not a metallic looking plastic like others and the curved edges make it look appealing.
On the back, there is a headphone output for late-night listening, or potentially plugging into a hifi.

The initial setup was extremely easy, it was just a case of plugging it in, letting it search for the network and entering the WEP key (via the scroll-wheel on the top).
Scrolling through letters is a lot quicker than using a remote, so we were up and running within 5 minutes.
As this was a review, I decided to read the manual (not something I usually do!!) which was very clear and easy to follow.

The selection of radio stations is extremely large (the US list is enormous, but I kept mainly to UK stations).
On top of the main BBC and top commercial stations, there were a lot of smaller stations as well as University radio from most Universities.
The bitrate for BBC stations was quite low, around 48kbit/s which is a shame, but not a fault of these radios.
It works with all BBC stations including the listen again ones which is an added advantage, especially for anyone abroad.

Sound quality was reasonable considering the size of the unit and the fact it only has one speaker.
It certainly won’t compete with the hifi equivalents (Squeezebox, Roku, Sonos etc.), but this is designed for a different purpose.
For a kitchen/bedroom environment, it would be on par with most mini-systems.
Bass is good, thanks to the bass port on the back and it is loud enough to fill most rooms, certainly louder than I expected from looking at it.
The speaker is extremely directional, so it is worth moving it slightly to get the best quality depending on where it is located.

The menu on this is extremely clear and very straight forward as well as being very responsive without any noticeable lag.
The scroll-wheel, used for pretty much everything, is superb, perfectly weighted and scrolling through thousands of stations took a matter of minutes. All players should have one of these!!
The backlight can be adjusted, which is good because the default is extremely bright and although dimmed when on standby, it is still capable of lighting a room.
The screen itself is easy to read from a small distance, but considering there isn’t a remote, you have to be next to it to use it anyway.

The PC connection was a little more temperamental than the internet radio, but that could be because of my overly complex network setup.
Scanning for PC’s would often struggle to find anything and when it did, would sometimes not find the shared folders.
It would always find them eventually, but could take a few rescans to do so.
It also requires an internet connection whether playing locally or remotely.
Once found, finding and playing tracks is all done via a queue, rather than a play-now button. I preferred this, but some people may not.
Sound quality for a 160kbit/s MP3 is fairly good, again the only restriction is the mono-speaker.
The inclusion of UPnP support is a good move, I found that much more reliable than the standard PC connection and also means no messing about with network shares etc.

Overall, for a kitchen or bedroom, this is an excellent device.
Its ease of use and build quality as well as competitive price make this highly recommended for those wanting to discover internet radio without using the hifi.