PURE Highway, In-Car DAB Radio With FM Transmitter

What I love about this...

Its really easy to set up. Once you get the aerial sorted you literally just plug it in and away you go

Its really cheap. Cheaper than most equivalent quality portable DAB radios and definitely cheaper than getting a DAB radio fitted in the car

Its easy to use, same as usual with Pure products

The sound quality is great. I've had no probs with DAB reception so far, although I've not been out of town with it yet

Its easy to find a interference free FM channel for it to transmit on as it hunts for a free one rather than you having to do it yourself. It also transmits using RDS so I'm hoping I won't have to get it to find another if I move into another area (not sure about this though)

You can pause rewind live radio which is a bonus as well

There is one minor annoyance though. As a reviewer has said before, you have to have the Highway pluged into the cigarette lighter to get it to transmit on FM (although I think it will work whilst plugged into my PC as well) this means you have to have the trailing wire between the unit and the lighter which is a bit irritating.

All in all however its a great unit and I am really pleased that I can finally get DAB in my car without having to spend a fortune.

After 3yrs of use, I have so many comments to make.
The Pure Highway enables you to listen to DAB radio stations on your standard FM car radio.
It can also be used as a personal DAB radio, using headphones (not supplied) as found on many modern mobile phones. You need to put AA batteries in the unit for it to work.
From my experience, this 'personal' DAB function tends to eat batteries, so you will need high capacity ones, which are rather expensive.
OK for listening to DAB whilst out walking, but not a substitute for home DAB. It would be far cheaper in the long-term to get a basic DAB radio for home use costing £25 or so.
Now to the 'car' use.
The highway uses 'vacant' FM channels to transmit the received DAB signal to your car radio. I am a taxi-driver in Cardiff, and use the Highway to receive Talk Sport (not so good on AM), and Planet Rock (only available on DAB).
The Highway searches for 'vacant' frequencies on FM to send the signal to your car radio. In Cardiff there are very few 'vacant' frequencies, and the ones found by the unit often have 'bleed-over' from the existing FM stations. There also seems to be a problem in this area with local 'rogue' FM stations only transmitting at certain times. I suspect that they are transmitting at low levels illegally, and blocking up the 'available' frequencies. This results in a 'fuzzing' of the reception. The only way around this is to keep 'retuning' the unit. Rather frustrating.
A common fault with this unit is the car power lead. It is far too flimsy, and I have got through two of them. After much use the wires inside fracture, and break the power connection. Also, the connection to the unit is NOT designed for unplugging every time you leave the vehicle. After time this connection can become worn, and needs a bit of fiddling to connect. A simple way around this is to hold the power lead to the unit with blue tac. This way the contact stays constant, and when you remove the unit (for security reasons), you will be reminded that the power lead is best kept in place.
Having got through two dedicated Pure power leads, I have found that the power lead for my Garmin Nuvi sat-nav is exactly the same fitting, and works perfectly.
Other advantages using the Garmin power lead are,
1, The Garmin lead is far more robust, and much less likely to fracture.
2, The Garmin lead is much cheaper than the 'dedicated' Pure item.
The supplied windscreen mount aerial is fine for most users.
I bought a 'mag-mount' aerial to enhance reception. The aerial for the Highway is 'active' rather than 'passive'. This means that it is powered, so you need to buy a 'Highway' enabled aerial.
Don't buy this item from Pure, an identical one can be bought from 'dabonwheels' at about £18, with a MUCH longer 5m lead. Better and cheaper.
The mag-mount aerial gives better reception, but also picks up more interference. I would say, get one.
A common fault with DAB, especially in cities, is the 'blanking-out' of the signal.
As a taxi-driver, I know the main reason for this.
Taxis with company radios are constantly receiving and transmitting radio signals. These signals can be strong enough to travel 20mls or more.
In a city centre, at very short distance they can easily 'blank-out' the DAB signal. Also the bus company in Cardiff use similar radios, which also have the same effect.
To summarise, I would say, DO NOT buy this item as a cheap solution to a dedicated in-car DAB radio.
After all, you only receive the DAB signal on you car radio in FM quality, not DAB quality.
The unit only allows you to receive DAB stations via FM.
If you are like me, and want stations such as Planet Rock and others, only available on DAB, then this unit is a must.
Also Talk-Sport is much better on DAB than AM.
Whatever you do, don't pay the £90 or so some retailers ask.
Go for the best possible deal, and accept in advance that this product does have its' flaws over a 'proper' DAB car radio.
You pays your money, and takes your choice.

My previous experience with DAB has not been good. That was with two different portable DAB receivers which, living where I do in a valley in Kent, both proved to be worse than useless.
I had no belief that in-car DAB would be any better because of the inherent limitations with the frequencies of transmission combined with the fact that you'll be in motion, but since I'd won a Highway in a competition, who was I to complain?
Much to my surprise the Highway works way, way better than I would have expected. Not least of which was considering the on-windscreen antenna which, although apparently amplified didn't look much more than a common "J pole" style of antenna well smaller than the optimal dimensions I would have expected (I have been a communications engineer all my life).
I installed my unit in my Vauxhall Zafira with the antenna on the left side of the windscreen while the car was parked on my driveway which, even on normal VHF FM means fairly poor reception.
The installation and set up procedure is a bit longwinded and if your car, like mine, doesn't power the accessory (cigar lighter) socket on standby then you'll need to turn on the ignition when you are parked. This is a bit of a pain but that's a Vauxhall design not the radio's fault.
After the Highway had gone through it's auto-set up and I'd found it's FM transmit frequency on my radio, my main listening stations of Radio 4, Classic FM, Absolute and XFM were all far better than on my normal radio.
The most stringent test would be when on the move but yet again the Highway more than surpassed my expectations.
On a 20 mile journey only once, whilst driving though Orpington high street did I get a case of what they call "Burble" due to poor signal.

I would probably say that to my mind the major drawback with the thing is that it is definitely NOT a hands-free device and using it whilst driving (changing stations or FM transmit frequency) is a definite safety no-no. There are 4 single button pre-sets but of those only 3 automatically tune to the station selected. The fourth button marked "4+" gives you another 17 stations for pre-set usage but as this requires you to press button 4+ and then rotate the tune wheel to select the pre-set you desire and then press the central button to tune to that station, you have to take your eyes off the road. This is an accident waiting to happen!

However the quality of the received audio is far better than I expected.

The unit can also be used to connect your iPod to your car stereo which could mean that with the Highway, your iPod and a sat-nav, the top of your dashboard would be like a space shuttle console with a lot of potential shrapnel in an accident!

The Highway can also be used as a portable DAB receiver where the headphones act as the antenna as well. Not surprisingly at my home location this still wasn't overly impressive in fact it was absolute rubbish and didn't work at all. Still this isn't what the unit was designed for anyway but for it's main purpose as an in-car DAB adaptor I feel it succeeds very nicely thank you.
All in all a pretty nifty piece of kit.

UPDATE: 18 March 2011

There was one very important issue that I neglected to mention when I reviewed this item.
I haven't changed my opinion of the device which still works very well but, in my area ONLY on week days! The problem I am about to describe only exists with the Highway and similar down-converting type units which take the DAB channels at around 220MHz and convert them to a selected frequency between 88 to 108MHz (approximately)

And why does this only happen on weekdays? Because there are so many illegal pirate radio stations squeezing themselves into every tiny gap and weak signal reception channel on the VHF FM band between (mostly) Friday morning through to Monday morning (I assume that the benefit offices are closed at these times!).

What these illegal stations do is run such high power, poor quality, over deviated, splattering FM transmissions that they simply take over your car radio (a thing called capture effect to the technically minded) and, at best interfere with the signal from the Highway unit or, in the worst cases, simply wipe it out so that instead of what you were expecting to hear you are rewarded instead with the "Whump, Whump,Whump, yay dood ya'kno wha' 'appennin'?" moronic broadcasting of these self important pirate station DJs.
This is NOT a fault with the Highway but simply that illegal broadcasting on the VHF FM band is increasing in leaps and bounds while the detection and prosecution of such stations appears to stay constant or actually decrease.

So be warned, as great as the Highway is, due to it's method of RF linking to your car radio, you WILL suffer this problem.
If however you can connect to your car radio by the audio output connected directly then you'll have no such problems.

Update over :-)

Update 2: 27 3 2011.
The unit started cutting out which at first I thought was my poor cigarette lighter socket but it wasn't. I replaced the 12v to 5v adapter and the radio worked perfectly. I am now waiting for a replacement power lead from Pure which, from reading their website and their replacement procedures seems to imply that this is a weak spot in their equipment.

update over :-)

Update 3: 6th April 2011.

Whilst the windscreen antenna works it wont win any prizes to my mind! Having now used an external mag-mount antenna and watched the signal strength hit all bars instantly I would suggest that, if you don't mind having a little antenna on your car roof then the increase in signal is worth it.
I do think that the Pure external antenna is over priced at £24 or thereabouts but apparently cheaper versions are available if you look. Being in electronics I simply constructed one out of an existing antenna and have been rewarded with constant signals in previous iffy areas.
Unfortunately though it won't deal with DJ Bigjobs and his crew's pirate beats as they will still cause problems since the coupling to of the Highway to your car radio isn't dependant on the Highway's own antenna.

update over :-)