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Denver IR-135 Internet Radio - review
As you'll know from the panel on the right, I created my own NetRadio using an ESP32 and a VS1053 audio chip. Two buttons and a 16×2 LCD panel made a simple UI. Configuration was managed using a serial terminal.
It wasn't great, but it worked. That was the most important thing. ☺
However, it did have some problems. For instance, there was no buffering, which led to glitching if the network was loaded. The setup was also rather tedious. A built-in server ought to make things a little nicer. And, of course, the big one was that it only supported http (non-encrypted) streams. Personally, I don't think SSL is justified for streaming radio, on my phone it can be a bit glitchy at times. But, alas, more and more stations are moving to an encrypted connection because "SSL everywhere".
The reason that I haven't looked at resolving some of these issues is because the ESP32 compiler is painfully slow. The most recent firmware was built on my Xiaomi Mi 10T phone, which was quicker than my Pentium 4 box. We're still looking at something in the order of 15-20 minutes to bake a firmware for my NetRadio code. The code is around 64K in size, and it is copiously commented, so really anything over about thirty seconds to run the compilation is... poor.
Quarter of an hour is... poop emoji.
I wasn't ever interested in a commercial internet radio because the last time I looked they were around €100 for a basic model, they were not customisable but could only play stations provided by their back end, and it just so happens that a bunch of them turned into expensive bricks at the end of last year when the Reciva aggregator shut down. Some enterprising people managed to fiddle the settings to point to a fake Reciva server running on one of their computers. But for the masses, it would just sit at startup trying to connect to a service that was no longer present.
Plus, despite the massive wealth of radio stations on the internet, there are surprisingly few NetRadios. Generally looking for this will turn up DAB radios that might support MP3s streamed from the internet. There aren't that many dedicated internet radios.
Around my birthday, I forget the exact date, I thought I'd just look for internet radio on Amazon to see what was on offer these days.
Amazon offered, as expected, plenty of DAB receivers. But lurking in the list was a rather inexpensive little wooden box. By Denver, a Danish company that appears to import and sell a wealth of "Chinese tech" (judging by their website), this box was a dedicated internet radio.
For about fifty euros.
Or to put it into context, a price that wasn't that different to ordering a second ESP32, audio chip, and a nicer display. I had planned to buy those in order to further develop my own firmware without messing with the one I actually listen to.
Or, you know, just buy this thing.
But... there's no point buying it if I can't add my own stations, and there's no point buying it if it can't support encrypted streams. Even if the built in screen/UI and battery were obvious plus points.
Usefully, Googling the model number got me a PDF user guide so I could see that a favourites menu could contain a good few entries (99, to be exact) which could be channels from the SkyTune agregator, or my own stream links.
I sent a quick email to Denver for clarification on the support for https, and they replied quickly. So I ordered it.
Coming in two versions, the IR-135B and the IR-135S, the difference is the colour of the front panel. Silver (the S) or black (the B). Some people might like the silver face. I... really didn't. So I got the black one.
Denver IR-135B internet radio.
Gotta admit, it's got the looks.
I did an unboxing and first use video.
Unboxing
In the box, the unit itself, a 1.5A power supply with a USB-C plug fitted, and a multilingual instruction manual.
There isn't a remote control, which is a bit odd given there's a little IR receiver in the device. I wonder what sort of controller might work with it? The Denver site doesn't appear to offer one as an option.
The display
There's a reasonably large LCD on the front. Colour, about 2.4", with a resolution of 320×240. I don't know how many colours the display has. It did a reasonable job of displaying some Polly Scattergood album art, so I'm going to say it's surely at least 256 colour.
In common with many TFT displays, it can be hard to see from certain angles. Interestingly, the display appears to be mounted "sideways" so that the fade-out happens if you look from the left or the right. Changing the viewing angle up and down makes no difference to the clarity of the display. So I'm going to guess that this was perhaps originally supposed to be used in portrait mode on a feature phone or low-end Android phone.
It has various levels of brightness, fully adjustable in 5% increments. It's reasonably bright indoors, and you can clearly see it at 75% brightness in daylight on a miserable day. I didn't try a sun test due to a lack of giant ball of fire in the sky...
The display can be set to work in one of two modes. The first is "Normal" in which case it'll always be illuminated in the regular brightness level. This might be prefarable if you keep the radio plugged into the AC adaptor.
The other mode is "Dim" where the display shines at the regular brightness level if you use any of the controls, and then dims down to a preset lower brightness after about twenty seconds. This is useful for night use, and also may help (slightly) prolong battery life.
The controls
There are eight buttons, plus a rotary button which can also be pushed.
Internet radio user controls.
The upper left is the power button. Press and hold for three seconds to turn the radio on. Press and hold for about three seconds to turn it off.
If you're running from AC, a simple press will enter sleep mode, where the screen will dim down and show a clock with large digits. Press again to resume.
The time between first pressing the button and hearing a radio station is about eleven seconds (with a five second buffer).
The next button over, that looks like a house, is the Home button. Pressing this will take you to the menu screen. Pressing it again will take you back to the playing screen (you'll also go back to this after about 30 seconds if you don't do anything).
Holding Home for three seconds is a shortcut to the equaliser.
Pressing both Power and Home at the same time is a hotpress for reset. The radio will immediately reboot.
The two buttons below are a Left and Right. Pressing Left will back out of where you are, so you can go backward in the menus. Pressing Right might move into a submenu.
Pressing Right when playing a station will switch views. The detail view has a channel icon (if there is one) plus a report of what's currently playing. The next view simply shows the title with no icon. The next view gives technical information (genre, codec, sampling rate). The next view is the big clock. And the final view is the channel icon, full screen. Pressing again will loop.
Holding either when playing a station will switch to the previous (Left) or next (Right) station in the list.
Over on the other side, the heart button calls up your favourites. And the numbered buttons will directly select the first, second, or third station in your favourites.
Long-pressing one of the numbers will set the current station as the numbered preset. It is NOT recommended that you do this.
Finally, the big round knob. In the menus, rotating it left or right can select menu options or whatever, and pressing it will 'OK' the selection.
When playing a station, rotating the knob will change the volume, and pressing it will stop/restart playback.
When playing a station, holding the knob will add the current station to your favourites list.
That little dot to the upper left of the screen is an infra-red receiver. Without a controller, no comment...
The speaker
Not particularly impressive, but perfectly serviceable. I've heard worse. The speaker is only 6cm so you can't expect it to crank out the bass. That being said, when I'm at my desk I listen to stations in mono using the speaker because it makes my powered computer-speakers sound rather pathetic in comparison.
Note that it starts to distort over around ¾ of the volume. So, not recommended to crank it up.
In the living room, I plug into the amp to the 12" speakers to crank out something that does justice to metal. ☺
Around back
Around back is the reason why I'd never buy the little Amazon Echo Show 5 (which is often heavily discounted). Other than the obvious issues of intentionally installing a commercial surveillance device in the house, the revised version of the Echo Show 5 removed the headphone jack, you're left with a sole 1.65" speaker, which means it's 2/3 of the size of the one in this radio, and probably sounds 1/2 as good.
It's will known that little speakers sound a bit rubbish. Removing the ability to hook it to better speakers means that I simply wouldn't ever choose to listen to radio stations with it.
Let's put it like this. My preferred genres are eighties rock, symphonic metal, and gothic metal. This Denver radio is lacking in bass but it's actually better than I was expecting. And for those times when I want to listen in better quality, I actually have two choices.
Internet radio back.
There is a headphone jack for plugging in headphones (and powered speakers). Plugging something into this socket will mute the internal speaker.
The second 3.5mm jack is a line level output for use with amplifiers. As this is line level, the volume control has no effect. Additionally, plugging something in doesn't mute the speaker (but since it doesn't use the volume control, you can simply turn the sound right down).
It looks like Denver is being ahead of the game when it comes to the EU mandate to have things use a common (USB-C) power connector. It was actually a surprise to see USB-C here instead of the typical micro USB, or worse, mini USB.
There's a little LED off to the right. It's red when charging the battery, and green when charging is complete.
Battery
Switching to and from battery is seamless. I can't speak for battery life as I've not let it run down. I did use it for a few hours the other night and it looked like it used about half of the charge. So at a pure guess, I'd say maybe 5-6 hours on battery? But like I said, I've not run it flat to test it.
What is worth noting is that the charging is really rather slow. If it'll run for five or six hours, count on charging taking a similar amount of time.
Still, it has a fairly standard 18650 Lithium-Ion cell inside, so it's probably good that it doesn't try to sling a full charge into it in half an hour like some smartphones try to do.
WiFi
The WiFi antenna isn't big, so it's so-so with weaker reception. Don't expect miracles, but on the other hand it performs better than my iPad Mini.
Associating with WiFi could be a trauma due to how you enter characters one at a time, if you have a long password. You do, right?
There is a WPS mode for easier pairing, but I trust that everybody reading this blog has had the good sense to disable that glaring security hole.
Which leaves... a little app called Esptouch that you can obtain from the relevant app stores. Run this, enter the password for the selected access point, and then select Broadcast if you're on the same access point and frequency, or Multicast if you're on a different access point (on the same network!) or are connected using 5GHz (the ESP32 only does traditional 2.4GHz WiFi).
Set up the radio by choosing "Add AP (SmartConfig)", and when that's waiting for data, prod the "Start" button on the app. After a few moments, the radio will pick up the connection details for the access point.
Doing it that way was pleasantly simple.
Note: There may be additional complications at this point if your network is set to reject unknown MAC addresses and/or there's a button to push to allow associating a new device. This is the prerogative of your network, and not under control of the radio.
The radio remembers access points. I'm not sure how many, as I only have two. It's smart enough to filter out non-access points such as direct connections to printers.
It won't switch access point to pick the one with the best signal. This behaviour can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it can always keep you connected as you move around the house, but a curse because in the case of Android, it isn't smart enough to filter out non-APs (like printers!) unless you specifically set "Don't autoconnect".
So, then, this radio won't switch APs automatically. But it's not hard to switch manually. It remembers the password, so all you need to do is choose it and it'll connect.
The UI
Pressing Home or powering up without a station selected to autoplay will show the main menu. The UI is snappy and responsive and pretty easy to use.
The main menu.
Turning the knob selects from one of the following:
My favourite - favourites list
Internet radio - choose a Skytune station
Media centre - play music from a NAS or other share
Bluetooth - becomes a Bluetooth speaker
Alarm - set up two possible alarms
Sleep timer - set the radio to automatically turn off
Configuration - set everything up just as you want it
Since taking photos of the display would make your eyes bleed because of the clash between LCD panel and high resolution camera... I took a couple of days to reproduce the character set used and then threw together some BASIC code to more or less reproduce some of the displays. It's not exact, but it's close enough.
So let's take a look at all of this in turn.
My favourite
Favourites.
Wobble the knob to choose a station, press the knob to begin playing.
Remember, the buttons 1, 2, and 3 will immediately play the first, second, and third stations.
Oh, and a big thumbs up for spelling "favourite" correctly. ☺
Pressing the Right button will allow you to edit the current entry - move up, move down, delete, move to top, and move to bottom.
Internet radio
This provides a portal to the Skytune list.
Going via Skytune (first option), you can choose Local radio (by detected country), Globe most popular, all, by genre, or by region.
Don't choose Globe all. There's a mere 33,486 stations to scroll through!
By genre asks if you want music or talk-based. Following this, a detailed but rather eccentric selection of genres to choose from.
You can see this for yourself. Just go to http://skytune.net/.
If order to choose a radio station, click/tap on the heart icon. You can then choose if you want to play it or add it to your favourites. You must then enter the radio's IP address. This is used by some script on the page to generate a special URL that the radio understands. For example, to play BBC Radio 6, it would send http://192.168.1.31/doApi.cgi?SL=EN&AI=129 and voilà, the radio begins playing something a lot more sedate than my usual selection. ☺
Looking by country is first subdivided by continent to make the list easier to manage.
You can also search, either containing, begins with, or ends with. Once you've chosen how to search, it will come time to enter something to search for.
Searching.
The white letters in the middle can be shifted by rotating the knob. Press the knob to accept the chosen character, and hold the knob to begin searching.
It's fiddly, but not impossible. Here I have entered mom's birthplace.
The results come back quickly.
Search results.
Choose a station and prod the knob to begin playing.
You might have noticed the shaded top of the search dialogue said "1/4", implying there are four entries in the menu.
So if there are three search methods (contains, begins, ends) what's the fourth thing? Usefully, it's a history so you can easily recall past searches without having to enter the information all over again.
Media centre
This will search for network connected storage. It had no problems finding a USB key inserted into the Livebox. I think it's an SMB share, but don't quote me on that.
Interestingly, it asks you if you want to look at video, music, or photos. It's not capable of playing videos or displaying photos so I wonder why they didn't just disable these menu options?
Playing MP3s seemed to work without problem, and it even picked up on embedded album art.
However, playing M4A files (such as downloaded from YouTube) crashed the radio. After a few moments it would reset itself, try to play the file, crash, reset, and so on in a loop.
There are two ways to resolve this situation. The first is to dismount the media so the file is no longer accessible, or hammer the '1' button as it starts up and if you time it right, it'll start playing favourite #1 instead of the music it can't cope with.
Bluetooth
Provides a Bluetooth device, your phone can connect to it for playing music. Supports the traditional SBC codec.
Bluetooth.
Oh my god, I've just noticed that my Mi 10T also sends track information. Nice. My Samsung S9 doesn't, and I've often wondered if it was possible.
Oh, even better. With CustomRadioPlayer for streaming radio, it sends the channel name followed by the track name. Very cool.
Note that you cannot do anything else with the radio (like use the menus) when it's running in Bluetooth mode. I'm guessing the codec handling takes a lot of processor grunt? Probably does it in software rather than hardware (like dedicated speakers).
Alarm
This permits you to set up to two alarms, which can either play a tone or a radio station. Not only a time as you define, you can also set it to repeat once, daily, or on specific days.
Note, however, that alarm function only works when the radio is connected to AC and is in standby mode.
Sleep timer
Have the radio turn itself off in 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 120, 150, or 180 minutes... or disable the sleep timer so it stays on.
Could be useful if you're listening to something soothing to try to fall asleep.
As I write this, WZBA is playing "Sweet Child of Mine". Not exactly sleep inducing. ☺
Configuration
A set of menus for setting up the radio.
Configuration.
Network allows you to select if WiFi is always on, or if it turns off after 30 seconds of not being used (like if you're in Bluetooth mode). This can save power when running on battery, but it will make it take slightly longer to play a station.
You can also select what channels are available (1-11 USA, 1-13 EU, 1-14 JP/CN), and of course add and manage access points.
If you need to change the current access point used, this is where.
Choosing an access point.
Date and time is for setting your timezone (automatic or manual), the format (12/24hr), the date format (dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy - sadly no yyyy/mm/dd), and whether or not to use network time.
If you don't use network time, the time will blink "00:00" every time you turn the radio on. I can't imagine this is particularly useful, but it's there in case you want to have to set the time yourself like you'd do with your microwave...
Setting the date and time.
Language allows you to choose what language you want the UI to be in. German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Czech, Hungarian, Slovenian, Romanian, Croatian, and Chinese.
A rather peculiar selection, given that Denver is a Danish company. I'd have expected Danish, Swedish, etc to be in there somewhere.
Local radio sets the home country. It can be automatic, or you can choose (continent, then country).
Playback setup is for network shares. Repeat all, Repeat one, Shuffle, or Normal.
Resume play selects whether to resume what was previously playing once it's ready, or if the radio should start up in the main menu.
Dimmer sets how the screen should behave, and what brightness level (5%-100% in 5% steps) to use for normal and dim modes.
EQ lets you choose or define an equaliser option. You may find "Rock" helps boost the bass a little if using the internal speaker, but if you're using anything else, it's best to leave the EQ flat. The music you're listening to has already been mixed to sound its best (or, at least, how it is supposed to sound - one could argue about a lot of CD mixes, but I digress).
Really, the only need for a custom EQ is to cater for deficiencies in your setup.
The available equaliser defaults are: Flat (none), Rock, Jazz, Pop, Classical, Dancing, Heavy metal, Disco, Live, Soft, Hall, or Advanced.
In Advanced, you can set up the preamp gain (-18dB to 0dB), then set five frequency bands to a value from -12dB (cut) to +12dB (boost). The frequencies are 105Hz, 300Hz, 850Hz, 2.4kHz, and 6.9kHz. A rather strange selection of bands. 105Hz is bass, use sparingly. 300Hz and 850Hz are low mids, a lot of instruments and male vocals can be in here. 2,4kHz is the high mids. Synths, percussion, and female vocals are here. And finally 6.9kHz is the upper range of "presence".
Generally, in order to avoid distortion, if you want to boost a specific frequency band, it might be better to cut the others.
Finally, you can set up the 3D depth from 0 to 100% to enhance stereo separation. This uses some boosting, so you might need to cut some preamp gain in order to avoid distortion.
Setting a custom EQ.
Buffer time lets you specify if you would like the default two second buffer, or the more resilient five second buffer. The larger buffer means it'll take longer to start up but if it glitches using a two second buffer, this ought to fix that unless your connectivity is really shonky.
Information will show you Network information - this is where you can discover your radio's IP address - and system information (version numbers).
Software update will check to see if there's updated software to install. My app version is 20211110.1013, which looks awfully like just before quarter past ten on Wednesday, 10th of November 2021.
Finally, you can Reset everything to factory defaults.
But, usually, what you'll see is something like this:
Playing a station.
Problems
Setting presets 1-3
Holding the number button is supposed to set the selected station as the numbered preset. I imagine it does this by shuffling things around in the favourites list.
Well, pressing 1 to make station #3 become the first one... corrupted the database. It's not advisable to use this method to set the presets.
Organising stations using the web interface
There's a swap function to switch two stations. To say this was gonzo would be quite an understatement. Generally the 'from' station was switched correctly and with the right station, but where it was switched to was a dart throw in the dark.
Let's say that sorting out my preferred top three (for the number buttons) needed about a dozen swaps to get things in the right place.
Thankfully there's a way to download the database (seems to be encoded as base64, but unpacking it results in gibberish - some sort of compression?) and I used it a lot. Of course, I'm trusting that uploading the database actually works. Not tried it.
Suffice to say, the channel manipulation "needs work".
USB-C
The recess slot for the USB-C socket fits the adaptor provided. It doesn't fit any other USB-C plug in the house. The one connected to the router, that you can see in the picture at the top of the page, worked by taking a penknife to the plug and making it fit.
Literally, a millimetre extra around the recess would allow other USB-C power sources to work.
Adding stations
It should suffice to provide a channel name and URL, but no. You are forced to choose a country and a genre.
Choosing a country is tedious - plus I had to run IP lookups on some of my stations in order to know where the hell they were. Bollocks Radio comes from Mexico. Who'da thunk?
But choosing the genre is made of fail. The list is broken, it sort of follows the peculiar Skytune genre list until it gets to "Office" and then it just gives up.
No, really, it's broken. I pulled the pile of JavaScript apart to find that http://192.168.1.31/php/get_CG.php was the URL to retrieve the country list and the genre list. Oh, and no, I seriously doubt the ESP32 is really running php, it's neither powerful enough nor has enough memory onboard to manage that. But it can respond to whatever URLs are requested. Call it whatever you like.
Accordingly, I tend to classify mine as "Legends" (metal) or "Nostalgia" (80s).
Alarm usefulness?
With the radio in standby, if the power adaptor is unplugged for more than about three seconds, the radio will turn itself off (it doesn't do standby mode on battery power).
So it'll likely be enough to ride out brownouts and glitches, but not an actual powercut.
Which means I wouldn't trust the alarm.
To put this in conext, I have three alarms to wake me up. My phone alarm sounds at 7.10am. It will sound again ten minutes later. And ten minutes after that, a different (older) phone (my S5 Mini) will sound. And that's in a different place, so I have to be up to turn it off.
I'm usually awake by about quarter to seven, but I'm paranoid that one day I might actually get a good enough sleep that I don't wake up on time.
Hasn't happened yet, but there's always a first time, right?
5GHz
Not a fault of this device in particular, the ESP32 doesn't support 5GHz. Maybe in the future? Thankfully I live rural, so the only thing congesting the 2.4GHz band is Bluetooth and the microwave.
Media playback
It's a bit pointless showing video and images on a device that can't handle these. Shouldn't bother. Also, either M4A playback is bugged, or it's just not supported.
Stereo separation
It's a shame that the 3D effect is part of the custom EQ rather than able to be applied to one of the existing ones.
Or, maybe, it's a shame that you can't press Right on an EQ preset to have the option to copy it to the custom setting to allow for it to be tweaked.
I had planned to recreate the Rock EQ with some 3D, but I couldn't get my EQ to sound like the preset, so I gave up.
Now what I like
Wide choice of radio channels
It's a bit of a pain because there are so many, organised a bit oddly. But there are plenty to try.
Automagic control of stations
This is the skytune.net site integration with the radio, because honestly it's just easier to flip through stations using a browser.
Responsive controls
Nothing worse than a UI so shonky that when you press a button, nothing happens. So you press it again, and then the UI catches up and actions the button twice meaning what happens is probably not what you wanted.
Thankfully the UI of this radio is snappy and responsive, and a little "I'm busy" box pops up at the bottom right of the screen when the radio is doing something like pulling data from the internet. It's also animated, so you can see it hasn't crashed.
A built-in speaker...and battery
It's actually pretty cool. I can take it into the kitchen with me and just start it playing and it sits there looking good (stained wood blends with just about anything) and playing whatever I selected.
A UI that doesn't suck
While the genres and such might be weird, the UI is actually pretty good. You have the options that are necessary without annoyances and stupidity. I've seen much worse, and I don't detest using this device.
Actually, thanks to the option to auto-play, once it's set up you can pretty much ignore most of the UI except for the Favourites menu.
And, whoever did this, a big thank you for using British spellings (such as favourite and centre instead of favorite and center).
A clear display
The display shows what's important. Well, okay, maybe not pasting the skytune logo but I guess they felt they had to display something in the absence of an actual station logo...
Anyway, it's currently playing. At a glance I can see WiFi strength, battery status, running on AC, the time (good god, half ten already?), the channel, the current song name, and how long I've been listening.
3.5mm sockets
Having a headphone socket is good. Having a line out as well is brilliant. My amp likes that. So do I.
That there is an EQ
Okay, it's odd and quirky, but it does help to provide some correction. For example, choosing "Rock" can help enhance bass when using the internal speaker.
Easy on the eye
Did I mention how good it looks?
Compatibility
Happily handles both AAC and MP3, at all sorts of bandwidths and sample rates.
Handles plain http connections as well as secure https ones.
The links I've given it were direct stream URLs (as that's what CustomRadioPlayer wants). It's also possible to specify .pls or .m3u files. This is actually preferable, in case the stream location changes. Typically you can get a pointer to these if the station offers a "listen with WinAmp" link.
Future proof
Should anything happen to skytune, the radio will lose a fair bit of functionality, but the radio won't be a write-off, because the favourites list can cater for 99 stations, and these can be completely custom links. So as long as you can obtain the link URL to program into the device, you can listen.
I guess the demise of Reciva made others rethink the logic of tying a device to a specific provider.
No favouritism
I also like that the favourites list is a mish-mash of Skytune stations and my own URLs. There's no annoying crap like "User stations" with the custom URLs segregated. Actually, that's something I really disliked about my Creative Zen media player, content on the SD card was accessed via an SD card option and none of it was integrated with the content on the player itself.
So it's really nice that this radio doesn't care about the origin of a station, it's just the next one in the list.
It generally just works
Writing this has taken hours. A lot of coding and such to fake up the screenshots, and checking stuff. All the way, I pretty much listened to WZBA (taking a break from 80s pop and metal) and it just sat here propped up on the back of the keyboard and... well... did what was expected.
No glitches.
No dropouts.
No crashes.
Okay, it isn't perfect. You're not going to get perfection for fifty euros.
But for what I paid, it is actually better than I expected.
I'm pleased with this.
Yeah.
I know.
Mind blowing.
I've actually bought a gadget that I didn't spend half the review taking the piss out of because it was such a disappointment.
Do you have any idea how many times I've written words to the effect of "seems like reasonable hardware let down by firmware so awful I can only surmise that the developers have never actually used their own product"?
Not in this case.
For fifty euros, this thing is actually pretty... good.
There.
I said it.
Now I need to go lie down. ☺
Actually, I need to eat. It's ten past eleven at night and I've not eaten anything today. So please excuse me not checking this blog post. Need to eat, then enter Standby mode myself.
Your comments:
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Anon, 8th January 2023, 00:37
50 euros is about £44. So I took a look on Amazon. On the UK site it's being sold for £70. Nearly double the price. Rip-off Britain, again. (Not my fault, I voted Remain.)
What's the audio quality like? How does it compare with, say, a Squeezebox Boom, Tivoli One or Pure Digital One? (The latter two are DAB/FM radios which include internet and DLNA streaming functionality.) The Tivoli and Pure are both mono speakers, but one of them (I think the Pure model) has an optional extension speaker, which gives stereo when connected. (The Squeezebox has 2-way bi-amped stereo speakers and pushes out 75W/channel, 50W to the bass/mid and 25W to the tweeter.)
Was tempted to get one like yours anyway for a fiddle around at £44, but £70 is a bit steep. If it supports DLNA then it'll play my local music, Squeezebox server also provides a DLNA music source.
David Pilling, 8th January 2023, 19:00
Seems unusual - as in you are currently top of Google for this model. It looks like the kind of project people do for themselves, made into a product. I couldn't find anything else exactly like it, normally you'd expect to find the same thing under various names. Everything I could find had DAB or FM as well.
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