Having just returned a Roberts Sound 200 (see my review) I bought this instead, but not from Amazon because I wanted the walnut finish which looks very good and is fifty pounds cheaper.
It is larger than the Roberts and as your other reviewers have said, a good-looking piece of equipment. It is easy to set up and I have not found any problems with the remote control which sits neatly in the top of the unit if you don't want to place it elsewhere. When the preset stations have been set up, they are easy to access by just pressing a numbered button. The volume control is spring loaded and you twist it briefly c/w or ac/w and the volume goes up/down one notch on the display. The longer it is held in the twisted position the more the volume changes.
On inserting a CD, the system immediately overrides whatever else you may have been listening to and switches to CD. You select tracks by fast forward as another reviewer says, until you find the desired one. Not ideal, but satisfactory.
The sound quality is excellent considering the size of the unit. There is a down-facing woofer with a control knob on the back to set for different environments. Speech, classical music, Mahler, chamber music all sound very clear and crisp.
I considered a Bose which is a comparable price, but the reviews said that the high frequencies were rather muffled and the Bose is smaller than the Ruark which possibly accounts for the poorer sound quality and I suspect that you are paying for the vast amount of advertising.
Altogether, the Ruark R4i is an excellent buy and I recommend it for anyone who wants to listen to CDs in any other room other than a where fixed hi-fi installation is situated.
