PURE EVOKE Flow, Portable DAB/FM/Internet Radio

I bought this radio to compare with the Tranciva IR804, another product with the same functionality but at half the price.

At the beginning of the review I might as well state I am keeping this one. Why? It's all in the sound. The Tranciva is tinny, whereas this one sounds like a reasonable mini-system.

Other than that, the Evoke leaves a whole lot to be desired in its usability.

Let's look at the things one by one:

Packaging, appearance: looks nice, glossy black, six line LCD display looks classy. The Tranciva (two line display, inferior finish) looks cheap, the Evoke expensive. As it should be I guess. Evoke box is nice, radio in a canvas bag, but no manual! Maybe this is cheap, perhaps it's so they can upgrade the product. Manual only available in PDF format online.

DAB. It works. But if you live in a poor reception area you might struggle. With the Evoke on the floor and (long) aerial fully extended it's dropping out continually. The Tranciva seems to be more sensitive and with aerial out has no problems. The DAB thus does not get used, because the aerial gets in the way under the kitchen counter.

FM. Bog standard. Nothing to report. Who's going to use it?

Onwards: the point of this device is to connect to a wireless router. No point in buying it otherwise - stick to a cheaper DAB. This process was easy enough, and supports modern WPA2 as well as older encryption. No ethernet port, which could be a problem for some.

Media streaming: a great function. I've used Windows Media Player for years now, and it supports Windows Media Sharing. To connect, you select the 'Media Player' menu option, and it will scan for servers. If you don't have Media Player, you can install Pure's media server.

How does it work? Well, it's horrible!

Task: to find 'Abba', and play their music. You'd think (if you've used Itunes or Windows Media Player), that you'd go to 'Artist', scroll down to A (not far to go), and select Abba.

Do you? Well no. The list is not in alphabetical order! I have 1335 artists in my library, and the order on the evoke is completely random. Unusable. The Tranciva (and Media Player) order it nicely. It might be if you use Pure's own server then things are in the right order, I haven't tried. Either way this shows a terrible lack of testing. The other problem with the Pure is that it loads the lists into tiny buffers. So you can't flick through 1335 artists, nope, flick through 20, wait, flick through, wait, arrrrrrgh. The Tranciva, despite the much smaller screen doesn't have this problem.

The other option is the search. So we type in 'abba'. No results found..... 'suede'. Nope, nothing again.

Ok, so let's settle for scrolling through the artist list. I haven't got all week, so I'll forget about Abba. Hmm, look, Coldplay, select that. I'm expecting to hear my 13 Coldplay mp3s. Er, no. Instead I get.... 'Don't Speak', by No Doubt. Why? Because one of my Coldplay mp3s is assigned to 'unknown album', and so is the No Doubt song. In fact, whatever I choose, I get Don't Speak (or at least the two hundred or so artists - the artists with 'unknown album' go first for some reason). This is just broken.

So no search, no selecting by artists. On the plus side, the album list works, but it's not in alphabetical order.

It's worth a mention at this point of the usability, which is pretty horrid. The Tranciva has a 'MODE' button and a 'BACK' button, both of which are real buttons. The Evoke just has one iphone-style button (hard to press, and impractical in a greasy kitchen) to do these two jobs. So if you're listening to an album and want to switch to reggae, how do you do it? Press back until you get to the list of options? Nope, back takes you back to the mode selection screen. If you then choose media player thinking that you'll be able to choose 'Albums', 'Genres', etc., you were wrong - it just takes you back to the 'now playing' screen.

How do you do it? First you turn the tuning knob, THEN you press back. Horrible usability. The same thing applies to internet radio, the back button is completely useless until after you turn the tuning knob (which is annoying when you didn't want to change the track/channel, but go back to the previous screen).

Anyway, suffice to say the media player, which should be great, is not being used.

Final function, internet radio. This works, although the UI is very clunky. You can go to the special evoke website (which is also very clunky) to add radio streams, which will then show up on your radio (but beware that it claims URLs with a port number in are invalid and won't accept them). There's a search function for radio stations.

Internet radio is brilliant - thousands of stations, and there just might be one out there that plays exactly what you want. So how does the Evoke get on with browsing through stations? Slowly. It takes 25 seconds to 'tune' and then 'buffer' each station. So forget flicking through the dial. The Tranciva? THREE seconds. Eight times faster. And this is no fluke. The devices are both on, sitting next to each other, both connected to the same fast, expensive router with a fast 8mbit connection behind it, and this is repeatable time after time connecting to the exact same stream.

What's going on? The Tranciva is a cheap and nasty product with inferior hardware and a tiny screen. Binatone haven't sent the Tranciva to 'What Hi Fi' (or anywhere else) for review - they just knocked it out on the cheap, while the Evoke Flow is a supposed flagship product.

Yet with the unfortunate exception of the sound quality, I'd take the cheapo Tranciva every time.

As it is, I'm sticking with the Evoke Flow, I've found an internet radio station I like, and as long as the Pure Evoke just sits there playing that one station, there's no issues. In the mean time, I'm hoping that Pure work out how to load a station in 3 seconds rather than 25, that they fix the Media Player, and that they fix it so that 'back' goes back rather than 'home'. And for future versions, lose the silly touch-sensitive buttons.

I have had 2 of these in the past 3 weeks - both faulty and no Amazon can't replace it again so I have to wait for a full refund. I'm going to buy a Roberts Stream 83i - much better all round reviews.
I have two other Pure radios (highway and one) - both great.
This one, however, has left me disappointed. The first one broke after about 2 weeks - the main display disappeared - radio worked but I could not see display to change anything! I had already had a minor problem with it when it would not switch off - locked up on an internet station - until I removed the chargepak. I have subsequently read reviews where others have had this problem.
Radio number 2 arrived last Friday - by Tuesday it was completely dead - not switch on at all, mains, chargepak - nothing. Pure support took 2 days to respond to my email and then told me to do a factory reset - and how to scroll through the menus... I replied they obviously hadn't read my email - the radio was dead!! The person I spoke to at Pure was quite condescending originally - how did I know it wasn't the power supply, etc. Then did apologise - said she was shocked I had had this experience and denied any known problems with the radio. After having researched further - here (all reviews 3stars and below)and elsewhere I think this simply isn't true.
Another issue - despite new firmware supposed to fix this problem (according to Pure), the listen again kept crashing after pausing. I agree with others here that it takes ages to tune and buffer and the menus are laborious. I also do not like the touch sensitive buttons.
I'm cutting my losses, returning radio, extra speaker and chargepak to Amazon for a refund and buying a Roberts. Pure did not seem interested in keeping my custom, despite me wanting them to on the basis of past radios! Very disappointing.
Thanks to Amazon for good and easy returns policy - shme I have to wait for my money though - due to no fault of my own.

I'll get straight to the things that you'll probably want to know about this radio first. It does play the BBC's listen again audio streams, it plays radio station live streams, and it does play podcasts. You can also add your own streams that you find to your radio.

I'll also go on to describe the audio quality of the set in a moment, but in short the sound quality IS very good - none of the online audio I have listen to has been of a poor quality - so patchy streams obviously benefit from the nice sound you always get from a Pure DAB radio.

However, I wanted to mention the interface that you use to change station and browse internet stations. This was the thing I was most curious about, so thought I'd use this to answer some of the questions I had to help others.

The screen is bright, and yellow, an interesting and not unattractive choice. There are different settings for when the radio is turned on and when it is off - and you are able to set the screen to stay on showing information, or go completely blank after 7 seconds. You are able to change the brightness manually, or use what appears to be an inbuilt light sensor just below the volume dial.

There are always displays to show what station you are listening to and mode you are in (DAB, wi-fi etc), as well as volume, signal strength, time, battery level (if using the optional Pure battery one) and an icon to show whether an alarm has been set. As well as this, you can also choose what information is displayed on the screen. This depends on what mode you are in, but for DAB and FM this is scrolling text, information on the broadcaster (DAB only), the time and date, or signal strength. For internet listening these options are a station description, station location, time difference, signal strength, URL and time and date again. If any of this information is too large to fit on the screen it will constantly scroll slowly upwards in a loop. This can cause the screen to become a bit busy as the station name will scroll along the top of the screen in a horizontal direction - altogether a slight distraction.

The alarm can be set manually, as well as automatically from a broadcast signal, and there are options for the length of snooze, to set an alarm to wake to DAB or an Alarm (not wi-fi), a countdown timer (called Kitchen timer) that works in hours and minutes, and a sleep timer which goes up in 15 minute increments up to 90 minutes. The handle across the top of the set also works as a snooze button, and wakes the screen up when it is set to go blank.

Controlling the radio is done by starting at one main menu. Despite working well, this is one of the set's most annoying points. In DAB, FM, PC streaming and Auxiliary input modes it is fine - when you want to go back to this menu, you press the back button - much like on an iPod on a Sky box. However, in wi-fi mode it's a confusing route through the menus to get back to this screen - pressing a button, scrolling down 5 out of 6 items in the menu (meaning careful, precise selection of this option, as you can't just spin the dial to the last option), then selecting it with a different button.

Altogether, this means it's impossible to change from wi-fi to another mode quickly, or with one hand (you have to hold the radio as the button you press is not one of the touch sensitive ones). In a rush it's easy to get this menu mixed up with a wi-fi submenu where you navigate wi-fi options too, and then you get lost inside a maze of menus. This may sound like a small problem - it's not. I consider myself someone who is easily able to get to grips these things, and after 2 or 3 weeks, I still make mistakes.

The one hope for this gripe is that the set's firmware (and therefore interface) is upgradeable over your wi-fi connection (this has happened once already, so shows positive signs that Pure are still developing the set), however there were no obvious changes to the interface. It was quick and simple (a few confirmation button presses), taking about 2 or 3 minutes. Connecting to wi-fi is similarly painless: a connection wizard is ran (this may happen automatically when you enter the wi-fi mode for the first time - I can't remember now), it detects available networks, when you select yours it asks you for the password - a standard wireless connection process.

So getting over this annoyance with the main menu, you navigate online stations, streams and podcasts through Pure's "Lounge". This takes the form of a sub-option on the main menu which allows you to look through a list of your favourites, live streams, listen again programmes, podcasts and Pure Sounds (more on these later).

There is a quick scroll to move through the list of the whole 8000 or so stations Pure lists quickly - this isn't great as it the screen doesn't scroll smoothly, so the list of stations judders as it moves, however it is the best a screen of this type could do, so it would be hard to mark the unit down for this. Thankfully
,
there is also a good search function on the radio. However, this is also accessed through a confusing route through the menu system, rather than just a touch on the screen. It involved a touch, scroll down 6 places on the menu, a button press, and then a scroll down one item in the menu before *another* button press, then a press of a touch
sensitive button.

However, when you reach the search, it *is* worthwhile, as it does offer comprehensive search options.
You can hunt down stations on name, genre, country, language and audio stream quality. The station name search allows you to type the name in (or part of it) from the on screen keyboard, operated by turning and pressing the select dial on the unit, the other options are selected from pre-set lists on the radio.

Listen again streams and podcasts are navigated and searched in similar ways, and you can have similar menu navigation problems moving between listen again, podcast, and live stream functions. When listening again to programmes or podcasts you are able to pause, rewind and fast forward - though you can't do that on live streams - a shame. However, the pause and rewind functions are a bit clumsy: there is a bit of a delay between pressing pause and the audio stopping, and when fast forwarding or rewinding, progress is shown in percent, rather than time, and there is no option to show time remaining. This means you often end up missing the point you were scanning to find. When selecting a listen again programme or podcast that has more than one episode, a list of available programmes are listed (usually with a date).

It would be interesting to know what criteria Pure use for listing these stations in their "Lounge" - the Listen Again content seems to be exclusively BBC programmes, and seems to only list continuing series - one off programmes don't seem to get listed. A programme which began its series today still isn't listed in the directory 12 hours later.

Thankfully, you are able to add your own streams, podcasts and listen again programmes with Pure's Lounge website. It is free to register - and you don't need to have a radio to check it out, so sign up for a login and browse to see what you think. Despite the front page looking nice on a big resolution screen, it's a pain on a small one, and overall the design and functionality is probably just average.

A brief word on the site's minor functions first: a recommended section and a what's new section both seem to be edited by hand, and so are not dynamic recommendations based on your listening patterns. There's also a recently played section (which doesn't seem to work) and a most popular section (which has odd choices, but presumably because there aren't yet enough people to make this list change regularly). Subsequently, there's nothing there that I'm interested in, and I don't think the content has changed in the past few weeks. There are options to edit your profile and register your unit with Pure (essential as you need to input your radio's serial number for it to connect to the Lounge and use it's search and ordering functions).

The site's main use though is to order your favourites - which again, is another essential task to help you access online audio quickly. You can create folders using a clunky drop down box, into which you can add stations, podcasts or listen again programmes from Pure's list. Crucially, however, this is where *you can add your own* streams, or podcasts (I haven't been able to establish if you can add listen again programmes here too), so this is where I have added stations I have found to be missing from Pure's catalogue. When you connect the radio to the website, a "My Evoke Flow" folder is created on the unit AND the website, and favourites you save on the radio set are added to this folder on the website - you cannot add them into folders you create yourself through the radio alone (a slight annoyance, but not that big a deal) - and you can't delete anything from your folders through the radio - all management must be done through the website.

Pure also offer an option to customise which stations the website shows you on it's homepage. It's obviously hoping that you use the site as a destination for online listening, but even this personalisation process is mystifying and thereby defeating the object.

The final option on the Lounge website and sub-section of the unit is for "Pure Sounds".
This offers about 80 different sound effects - most relaxing (noise of wind chimes, a babbling brook
and thunder storms), a few bizarre (pig farms, dogs barking, electric typewriters) and some quite useful (pink noise and white noise, which apparently help tinnitus suffers get to sleep). Read more ›