Media UK

DAB Digital Radio: most popular sets

What DAB Digital Radio sets are selling the best?
This is the best-selling list from Amazon.co.uk, updated hourly - with user reviews.

1 Pure Evoke 1XT DAB Digital Radio - Maple
Manufacturer: Pure Digital
Model: EVOKE-1XT
Average rating: 4/5 (12 votes)
Current price: £129.00 - buy
Latest review: I've owned my Evoke 1XT for nearly three years, and it has pride of place in my bedroom. While it doesn't offer the range of recroding/rewinding features that many DABs now offer, it compensates in its sound and its simplicity. If you are considering buying one, I'd highly recommend getting the XT-1 auxillary speaker - I have the Evoke on one side of my computer, the XT-1 on the other, and suddenly work becomes bearable. The lack of upgrades from Pure suggests that they got this one right first time. 5/5

2 Pure One DAB/FM Portable Radio - Black
Manufacturer: Pure
Model: VL-60912
Average rating: 5/5 (33 votes)
Current price: £48.93 - buy
Latest review: I was undecided on whether to give 5 or 4 stars since the performance, value and many factors are excellent. I have been waiting for DAB for ages and my area has just started receiving it - and Pure One was the radio I wanted after going through alternatives for some time. I agree with virtually all the good reviews now using it - but also the few not so good. The Pure Li-on battery is excellent, though expensive - and I have found it does last far longer than some of the reviews state. Maybe they did not leave it's first charge for 24 hours, as recommended? The problem is that the indication of the charge level shows that it is full until it is virtually not - therefore the sound just stops when you think the battery has enough power in it! I think a properly working graduated indicator would be better, showing when it was half full when it was, etc. I also agree with comments about changing stations being more awkward than hoped for. It would be nice if it just had one for going back to the last station used with only one press, for instance, instead of going through the playing about. Anyway, despite being delighted with it, I must cut marking to 4 stars for these relatively minor points. 4/5

3 Pure PocketDAB 1500 Personal Rechargeable DAB/FM Digital Radio
Manufacturer: Pure
Model: VL-60916
Average rating: 4/5 (31 votes)
Current price: £63.70 - buy
Latest review: Like others, this is not my first DAB experience. I have had a portable in the house for 4 years, and have recently bought a superb one for the car. This was bought to improve my home reception and portability. At almost a quarter the size of my Goodmans DAB, this little unit is amazing. First Autotune gives me 45 DAB stations. Small arial isn't too sensitve either. Sit this radio anywhere and it works. Have it upstairs and it also reaches even further. 10 presets on DAB and similar on FM. Tuning in each mode is very simple just from two menu buttons. Sound isn't fantastic, this is a single low wattage speaker, but listen 40 hours on a single charge is superb. I use DAB mainly to listen to current afffairs and talk channels anyway, so more than adequate for the job. USB port makes it constantly upgradable. I'm delighted and can't believe how little I paid for it. Well done Pure 4/5

4 Intempo Digital TRS-01S Silver DAB Transistor Radio
Manufacturer: Intempo
Model: TRS 01S
Average rating: 4/5 (4 votes)
Current price: £24.98 - buy
Latest review: Bought one as a Christmas present for my husband. He is using it every day and finds it very easy to use. The radio has a nice design and is lightweight. Easy to operate and switch between DAB and FM. Will recomend. 4/5

5 PURE VL-60907UK Siesta, Black DAB Digital Clock Radio
Manufacturer: Pure
Model: VL-60907UK
Average rating: 4/5 (34 votes)
Current price: £30.99 - buy
Latest review: not bright enough in the dark as the previous review have stated this is some quality kit the FM radio picks up a tonne of stations and the RDS names the broadcaster, the DAB and looks of the unit is superb If you flick around the DAB, you get a birdsongs channel. On other websites the only complaint i've seen other than 'a not bright enough screen' is that you "cannot set the alarm to play the radio whilst on sleep mode" To get around this set two alarms one at 6.30am set as 'DAB' thus music plays (you don't even have to roll over to press 'sleep' mode), then set the second alarm at 7am (when you want to get up) to 'tone', thus you can listen to music until the tone cuts in at 7am PERFECT Pure sort out the un-visable clock in the dark, and this would be awesome 5/5

6 Bush PSDAB2004 Personal DAB Radio
Manufacturer: Bush Industries
Model: PSDAB2004
Average rating: 4/5 (23 votes)
Current price: £39.99 - buy
Latest review: I paid less than 20 pounds for this, from a large branch of a well known supermarket who were obviously trying to get rid of them. I like the rubberised case, but like others would prefer the headphone socket at the top, so can put in a shirt pocket. Lack of power adaptor not such a problem. It says 4 volts, but will work fine on 3 volts. I paid 8 pounds for a suitable mains adaptor from a certain High St electrical retailer. It takes the same sized 'tip' as my Sony radio, but plug is at a different polarity. The annoying thing is that when used with a mains adaptor, the backlight stays on all the time, there is no option to turn it off. I use rechargable batteries for everything. I put in 2 fully charged 2000mA 'AA's and got 5 hours of them before the radio died: not too bad. Shame there is no facility to recharge batteries using the mains adaptor like on some other pocket radios, as annoying to keep having to take them out every day or so to recharge. In my locality, there are a few 'dead' spots where DAB fails completely....no FM available as a backup! I use my own earphones rather than the bundled ones as more comfortable. More than adequate sound quality and plenty of volume when needed (to drown out overloud inane mobile 'phone 'calls'). Given the lack of FM and rechargeable battery capability, I would not pay 60 pounds for this radio, but given what I did pay it is a bargain for what it is. This radio is similar to those branded Grundig, Mikomi and Wharfedale. The latter 2 named have FM and rechargable batteries, but the radio's display are all the same. 4/5

7 Pure One DAB/FM Portable Radio - White
Manufacturer: Pure
Model: VL-60911
Average rating: 5/5 (27 votes)
Current price: £43.99 - buy
Latest review: I don't get decent fm reception where I live, but with this little chap I'm perfectly happy listening to what I want. The sound quality is great, it looks smart and I have superb reception without needing to have the aerial out (one of my bugbears as I always seem to knock them and lose reception). Set up wasn't tricky, but you do have to press a couple of buttons and twiddle the middle bit when you want to change station. If like me though you pretty much have your favourite one that's on most of the time, this isn't a big issue. I can't really see why it not having an off button is a major problem - surely if you have to press a button to turn it off, just flicking the switch at the power point isn't too much trouble? That seems like a very minor point to be sending it back for, when it really is a lovely little radio. 5/5

8 PURE EVOKE-1S (maple) Luxury portable DAB digital & FM radio
Manufacturer: Pure
Model: VL-60884
Average rating: 3/5 (13 votes)
Current price: £72.99 - buy
Latest review: I bought one of these for my mother who lives out in the sticks where FM signal is poor. I knew that DAB signal was good as I have a set in my car which works well. She wasn't disappointed! She uses it mainly for Radio 4 and the sound fills a quite substantial kitchen, the controls are very easy to use - the simplicity for her was the killer app! So a couple of months later, the backlight failed on my kitchen DAB, (not a Pure) so the ideal replacement. 5/5

9 PURE EVOKE-1S (cherry) Luxury portable DAB digital & FM radio
Manufacturer: Pure
Model: VL-60885
Average rating: 5/5 (4 votes)
Current price: £75.40 - buy
Latest review: This is a great little radio! First it looks fantastic (every one who's seen it likes it), feels exteremly well made and most importantly sounds excellent. It is of course possible to buy the additional speaker for this if you want to get a stereo sound but personally I haven't bothered. The quality and volume of the sound as it is is excellent and one of the radio's key features is how neat it looks on it's own. The radio can be powered by AC or a separately available rechargeable battery and can receive Digital or FM broadcasts. It also has a line in socket (for plugging an ipod/MP3 player into) and a line out socket for plugging into a hi-fi as well as a headphone socket. There's also more features on it than I had expected e.g., various display options you can get when in digital mode. I'd read up quite a bit on digital before I plumped for this and what I'd read had stalled me a bit. First that, surprisingly, the digital broadcast was supposed to be of lesser quality than a normal FM broadcast (if you know about bitrates then FM is equivalent to about 192kbps whereas digital is usually at best 128kbps). The other more worrying thing was that although digital radio has been pushed heavily of late, in fact the UK is out on a limb a bit in that we are using an old digital format (DAB) and most of the rest of the world have gone with the newer DAB+ format which allows a higher broadcasting quality. This may not sound too much of a problem but, yes, you've guessed it, the current DAB radios won't be able to pick up DAB+! It's not clear yet though when the government will decide when we go with the new format, considering how many people have now bought radios on the old format!! I can however still very much recommend that you buy one of these despite the points above because 1.) to me the DAB audio still sounds better than the FM audio (and I'm fussy about these things) and 2.) the digital formats aren't likely to change for some time and until they do you'll enjoy a very good radio! 5/5

10 Intempo PG-01 DAB Digital Radio
Manufacturer: Intempo
Model: PG-01
Average rating: 4/5 (42 votes)
Current price: £64.84 - buy
Latest review: good all rounder, shame there is no battery bay to make it protable. If it had a battery bay it would be 5 star rating. 4/5

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