Is the Revo Ikon the answer to a music and radio addict's quest for a robust, high-quality all-round FM and Internet streaming device? Despite great sound and a reliable set of functions, the people at Revo have cut some corners that make this a slightly frustrating purchase. Read on... I'm a huge fan of radio, so when our old Morphy Richards Internet Radio started packing up the search was on for a suitable replacement. I settled on the Revo Ikon, on the basis that it appeared to be a high-end device for an affordable sum. The key draws over rival radios were: integrated terrestrial radio, iPhone compatibility, powerful speakers.
I bought the Ikon from Digitec.ch for about 500 Swiss francs. In Britain it's available for £279.95 from the Revo site or selected suppliers. For your money you get the radio itself, a remote control, and ten iPod/iPhone adapters to allow you to use all of Apple's handheld current media players.
In the Ikon's favour: The sound quality is fantastic. Having lived with the MR's squeaky little speakers for four years it's a revelation to be able to hear music and spoken word clearly in every room of our admittedly small apartment, or when doing the washing up. The Ikon's speakers are proper speakers, and provided you don't plan to attach your radio to a sound system or buy stand-alone speakers, this is probably as good as it gets.
The interface is easy to understand. Setup took less than 10 minutes, including finding the Wifi network, inputting the encryption key and setting up a couple of FM, DAB and Internet radio stations. For some reason Revo has decided to treat each source separately, so instead of having a universal favorites list you have to select whether you want to go into FM, DAB or Internet radio mode first, then choose from your pre-stored favorites or find a new channel to listen to. Maybe it's just me, but that kind of approach seems out of place in an age of media convergence.
It's also possible to stream music through your home network, which took some time to figure out. Here's who to do it with a Buffalo Linkstation. In contrast to the MR radio, the Ikon indexes network files very quickly and immediately identifies playlists, which is helpful.
Against the Ikon: When you buy an Internet radio you want to have access to all available podcasts and radio stations. For some reason the Ikon doesn't have some popular stations and podcasts, or at least doesn't list them where you would expect them. No WDR (West German radio) stations in the popular section for Germany; several BBC Radio 4 podcasts mysteriously unavailable on the Ikon even though they can be listened to on the Web. Clearly the people at Revo need to work harder on organizing their station and podcast lists and keeping them up to date.
Another thing an embedded device like this shouldn't do is crash. When I programmed in a personal favorites selection via www.wifiradio-frontier.com and tried to play a podcast, the radio spontaneously rebooted. The problem solved itself after several days, but why didn't it just say "podcast error" and return me to the previous menu?
The menu system, easy as it is to understand, can be a little bit fiddly to use. And since there are no configurable buttons like on the MR, only the touchscreen (sticky fingers beware!) it can take a while to get from one menu screen to another. Switching between your favorite stations shouldn't take more than one click, but unfortunately it does. Revo could have solved this by offering a more sophisticated remote control. Yet the one supplied has only a few buttons, none of which allow menu navigation. It also uses infrared, which doesn't work around corners. Wouldn't bluetooth have been better?
Speaking of the remote control, it dedicates two buttons to last.fm. Unfortunately that service isn't available in Switzerland. Maybe they should offer a discount or refund to users who can't access this service because of some arcane copyright issue.
In sum, the Revo Ikon is a good all-round Internet radio with great sound and solid network connectivity. I'm disappointed by the interface limitations and the annoying omissions in the radio and podcast lists. For my part, I'm giving the Revo Ikon 6/10. Could do better, especially for that price.
(more pictures of the Revo Ikon)
FJ