ROBERTS ColourSTREAM DAB/FM/WiFi Internet Radio with Dock for iPod and Colour Touch Screen

Am delighted with this.
Sound Quality: Excellent; good bass, plenty of volume, ability to modify equalisation.
Ease of Use: Very good; interface is very intuitive and responsive. Connecting to both wired and wireless networks was a breeze. Finding tracks on a largish music collection seemed painful until I discovered the search facility. Now it's a breeze too. Only issue is that my big fat fingers are too big for the tiny on-screen keyboard when using the search facility, but the buttons elsewhere are big enough. Printed colour manual is exceptionally clear and easy to follow. (It can be downloaded in advance from the Roberts web site.)
Features: Excellent; covers all the bases with Internet radio; DAB and DAB+; FM (including RDS). Connecting to a PC and then streaming music was very straightfoward and, even while using the host PC, there was no stuttering in the music playback. I don't have an iPod so haven't used the dock, but very easy to play back music from a USB stick. Haven't tried LastFM yet.
Overall: a very classy bit of kit.

I'm a fan of Roberts products in general - I associate them with high standards of build quality and functionality. Consequently, when I decided to buy an ipod dock / internet radio I thought spending the extra cash on a Roberts ColourStream would be well worth it. Foolishly, perhaps, I didn't try one beforehand. I bought one because I liked the specifications, I trusted the Roberts brand and I read a favourable mini-review in the newspaper.

In terms of build quality I have no complaints - it is exactly what I'd expect from this manufacturer. The setup wizards do their job without a problem. There is however, one huge problem.

The user interface to this radio is appallingly bad. In a product as feature-rich as this, a well thought-out UI is vital. With the ColourStream, it's a frustrating, counter-intuitive battle with a touchscreen that reacts as though it was made ten years ago.

It may be unfair to compare the iPhone with the ColourStream but it's unavoidable when you come to use it as an iPod dock. The Roberts is slow to respond, has inconsistent icons and a badly thought-out menu system that often forces you right back to the the root Menu when you only want to go back a single step.

As an example: I connect the ColourStream to my NAS drive hosting my iTunes library. From the main menu it takes six keypresses to get to the Album List (each keypress taking a second or two to react). And this is where another huge problem becomes evident:

The ColourStream can display only FOUR lines on it's display.

On an iPod, a quick swipe of the screen sends the albums zipping up the display and it's a fairly quick operation to find what you want to listen to. On the Roberts there is no swipe, no zipping, no no no. It's a keypress to scroll another four albums down the list. No alphabetical shortcut, no quick scroll, but a nasty, fussy touchscreen keypress to move another four albums down.

Scrolling down your album list four albums at a time, with a one second refresh time between each press.

Yes, it really is that bad.

Roberts do provide an Album Search facility. Album Search gives you a cramped on-screen keyboard to type in a search string. Forget how easy this is on your phone or pc. Forget how Apple UI's spring into life and dance beneath your fingers. Think set-top freeview box from 2003 and you've got an idea how much fun that is to use. Followed by a five or six second pause whilst the radio searches over your network for the album in question. It's practically unusable. And when something is a pain to use, it isn't used very often.

So, aside from the badly thought-out User Interface, the cramped display showing only four lines, the irritating non-capacitative touchscreen, is there anything else? Well, it drops wireless connection all the time - but that could be down to my network. Let me say, though, that I don't have any trouble streaming to my laptop in the same room. I'd be wary about the wireless connectivity, but it's just possible it's not Roberts' fault. Maybe they will release a software update - I sincerely hope so.
Streaming over a wired LAN is no problem at all, however, and goes some way to reducing the latency when searching through iTunes.

What can I say in its favour? Well, as I said before the build quality is faultless. And the sound quality is good (not great, slightly boomy, but alright). The remote is solid, although it is limited by the main box's design and desperately needs a 'Back' button. I find it's main use is to turn the volume up or down. Despite having maybe twenty buttons on the remote, trying to navigate any of the menus requires more facetime with the touchscreen.

I bought this radio because it seemed to 'do it all'. In practice it's crippled by it's UI. My advice to you is: try to use one in a big department store's electrical department before you commit to buy. Spend a little time navigating through the menus, see how you get on with it. You may not see a problem. You may be horrified and try something else. I hope you will avoid my mistake: assuming that a great name like Roberts will just get a touchscreen user interface right first time, when so many other manufacturers have failed.

I bought this as a replacement for the Tangent (no remote control and only 5 presets - but still very good and going to a good home) and so far very pleased. Good stereo sound and easy to set up. The one slight peculiarity I've found is that I couldn't get anywhere with an ethernet connection, but have found it works perfectly and hassle free with wi-fi. This seems rather counter-intuitive, but I can't say it's a problem as such since, as I say, it works well with a wi-fi connection. I haven't tried the fm receiver, but DAB and the iPod connection work very well. The latter in particular compares favourably with a Bose docking station in use elsewhere.