OXX Classic DAB+ digital radio

The OXX Classic DAB+ digital radio is a complete music solution for your home or office — it allows you to listen to both analog and digital radio as well as a huge range of Internet radio stations. Music streaming from a PC is a breeze once Wi-Fi is set up, or you can use it as a PC or MP3 player speaker through the auxiliary input.

A lot of time and effort has gone into the design of the Classic DAB+ digital radio. Available in either a shiny white or a glossy piano black finish the radio has a few satin silver accents that really set it off. It may not be particularly expensive, but it certainly looks like it is — we think it’s a very well styled piece of technology that we’d be happy to have on our office desks. A telescopic aerial at the rear of the player is kept hidden when not in use — good for when you’re just streaming audio.

The display of the unit is a stand-out compared to the other units we’ve tested such as the Revo Uno and the Pure ONE Classic. With four lines of sixteen characters, there’s enough space for station and track info as well as a clock and date-stamp. Brightness levels are adjustable in twenty increments for when the player’s both off and on — this is a feature we love, as it makes it possible to keep the player on a bed-side table where the dimmed display won’t keep you awake at night.

The interface of the unit is also well designed. It’s simple, with five separate source modes and a comprehensive settings sub-menu, controlled via a click wheel and a series of buttons. We never had any problems navigating the menus, and the dedicated analog volume control makes changing the volume of audio a quick and trouble-free procedure. We like the idea behind incremental digital volume control knobs, but OXX’s analog knob allows for precise adjustments. The only downside is that there’s no on-screen representation of the volume.

The reception was flawless with the aerial extended anywhere past half its length, which is consistent with the results from the other digital radios we’ve tested. Scanning for radio stations was easy using the digital spectrum, while changing the stations on FM only required a turn of the right-hand dial. You’re only given the option of choosing four presets for each source, so you’d better shortlist which stations you like best.

The OXX Classic DAB+ digital radio’s extra connectivity gives it an edge over the competition. You can connect using either the LAN port or in-built wireless — we opted for the latter, but found entering the Wi-Fi password to be somewhat like cracking a safe, rolling the right-hand dial back and forth and clicking until we’d selected all the password’s characters. You can opt to listen to any of the thousands of Internet radio stations and podcasts available, or connect to your home network and stream shared audio from a Windows-based PC.

Sound quality from the integrated 5W mono speaker is pretty good, with a decent balance between clear treble and rich mid-range. Thanks to a bass reflex port there’s a reasonable level of bass extension for a table-top radio. We were disappointed that there was no ability to adjust the bass and treble — and we’d like at least a rudimentary adjustment to the menu to bring the Classic DAB+ to the level of the Pure ONE Classic.

The Classic DAB+ is a great all-round digital radio. We’d happily use this radio on a day-to-day basis in the office — it’s a well designed and its features are well implemented. We have only a few small quibbles stopping us from giving it a perfect score.