C. Crane Brings Wireless Radio To Your Bedside
Over the past year we’ve reviewed a handful of different audio devices, and we were quite excited about trying out the C.Crane CC WiFi Radio. The prospect of 16,000 internet radio stations at our fingertips made us a little giddy, in a small box, and at a decent price.
As a radio, it’s decent. The internal speaker is perhaps slightly better than one might expect from a clock radio. Hooked up to external speakers the sound quality goes up considerably, though the extra space the speakers take up may defeat the purpose of having a very small clock radio. As a clock, and more specifically, as an alarm clock, we were disappointed. We had issues with the alarm going off instead of the radio, and were also dismayed that the time isn’t displayed while the radio is on. While the CC WiFi Radio doesn’t take up much room on the night stand, it’s perhaps a bit lacking in construction. The plastic construction and buttons felt a bit flimsy, and for the price it would be nice to be assured that when someone knocks it off the bed stand at 4 am it will survive. The screen is also small and fairly hard to read. The built-in ethernet port is handy for those without wireless (or a spotty connection), and a headphone jack is included.
The radio stations are played through Reciva, and currently does not allow for integration with such internet radio providers as Last.fm. One update to the original post: according to the company, Pandora is supported once a firmware upgrade has been applied. The radio was not difficult to set up, and connects over the wireless network that is already in place, though the configuration is not quite as user-friendly as we would have liked. Radio play can become an issue if the wireless signal is not strong, but that is not a fault of the radio itself, simply a pitfall of doing anything over a wireless network. Generally, the selection of stations is pretty great, with local news, government stations from around the world, and many more. It does look nice though, and the included remote is decent- plus, you can stream audio to it without too much hassle and thus have a nice remote kitchen unit.
The CC WiFi Radio retails for a pretty reasonable price of $160 or so through online retailers such as Amazon.com or even cheaper (and with tech support) via C. Crane themselves.
