We have the usual tech gadgets in our house. Two laptops, two desktop computers and four gaming consoles. But as a family, we haven’t moved into the realm of many other tech toys.
My husband is probably the worst of us. He doesn’t even particularly like the smart phone he carries for work. But he loves the Victoria Nostalgic Internet Radio from Grace Digital Audio.
This is a person whose eyes usually glaze over when I receive review samples of Nintendo or Apple products but his eyes lit up the minute I look this radio out of the box.
It’s an aesthetically pleasing design, which is what drew his attention right away. We set it up in our upstairs living room, where it had no competition from television or gaming systems. And while he appreciated the form of the radio, I liked the function.
A WiFi connection is needed to use the radio, which could be a drawback if you don’t have the router, but once that connection is established, the radio is easy to use. It took us five minutes to set up.
Essentially, any radio station that is available digitally is available via this radio. The first day, we listened to a British station, the next we listened to a country station in Atlanta, and I had it set to a station in Pittsburgh that plays songs from the 1960s. Sports and news stations are also available. The choices are in the thousands and almost overwhelming. The radio will also play your personal Pandora station or stations on various other digital stations such as Rhapsody or SiriusFM.
It comes with a remote but the dials on the front also work as controls as well. There is an app to control the radio from your smart phone but I can’t answer for how that one works as we don’t have an app-compatible phone.
One drawback that I have noticed is that sometimes our WiFi connection isn’t strong enough to hold the signal from the Pandora station. This isn’t a fault of the radio but rather the fault of our older and lightweight router. I’ve been meaning to replace it for a while, as the signal isn’t strong enough to pick up in the whole house.
The price tag on the Nostalgic Internet Radio is $229.99. Is it worth it? I think so. Obviously, you could find many of the stations on your computer but the radio organizes all these stations at the touch of a button, finding stations that I certainly wouldn’t have realized existed but completely love.
The sound also is far superior to the speakers on my MacBook. The radio has rear-ported speakers and dual-band equalization settings.
And it goes much better with the furniture in the living room than my MacBook.
