Grace Wifi Radio

• plays Internet radio stations through wireless home network
• streams music from PC or Mac for convenient playback
• compatible with Pandora®, Reciva Internet Radio, and MP3tunes
• 5 Internet radio station presets

Simply amazing . . .:
The "Grace Wifi Radio" is simply amazing. Even compared to the ease of iTunes, this radio is easy to setup, preset (or change) favorite stations, and use. There is just one speaker ... so it's not stereo, but the sound is rich and full -- easily filling a room. I bought one as an experiment and may yet buy more. If you have any problem with this radio, it's likely to be in the quality of your Wifi connection. It doesn't require lots of bandwidth, but it does require a solid signal and a built-in signal strength indicator helps achieve that. I'd give it five-stars easy.

Good radio for casual listening:
I didn't know anyone with an internet radio, but this little radio seemed like a good price so I bought one for my wife for Christmas. We've had it on the kitchen counter for the last couple weeks and it stays on most of the day. The jog dial is easy to use to enter letters and numbers when searching, etc. The screen is easy to read in both low light and full light. Although audiophiles would probably be turned off by the mono sound, I think it sounds great for casual listening. Mostly what we have used it for is the free Pandora service. Once you create a personal account on Pandora.com, you can create new "stations" directly from the radio by searching for an artist or song. When you find the correct artist, the radio creates and saves the new station (e.g. Beatles Radio) and then plays songs by this artist, as well as songs by other artists that play similar music. Evidently, Pandora uses something called the "Music Genome" to determine what other music is comparable. All in all, we've really enjoyed this radio and it's brought great music, both new and old, back into our house.

Sounds Good, Tough to Use, Finally Broke on Me:
I had one for 6 months before it broke. Used it rarely, because: 1) It took 15 seconds to start up and find a station, which dampens your enthusiasm for using it at all. 2) It kept losing track of my WiFi network and requiring me to unplug it to reboot the thing. This meant crawling under the bed every few days to find the plug. Other devices have had no problem at this location. 3) In general, the controls are clunky, poorly laid out and tough to identify in dim light. I replaced it with a Chumby, believe it or not - a product that does a heck of a lot more, for less money, and is still much easier to set up and maintain. If it sounds dorky, it is, but it's also a lot of fun. The Grace Radio came out of the box with lots of stickers on it. Pulling them off left a lot of residue, which made for an annoying start. It was OK to set up. Instructions were adequate, the device found a wireless network and after a few minutes spinning its control wheel to pick out the WEP key sequence it founds hundreds of radio stations. Sound was good, if a little tubby. When it played, that is. But it had to establish a network connection each time I started it (15 seconds or more), and then sometimes it couldn't establish that connection until I unplugged and replugged it. It got so that I would just go to a different room to hear music. Two weeks ago it did me the favor of dying. After making weird humming sounds for a couple of weeks it just gave up. After looking at various alternatives I bought the Chumby. That thing sure is ugly to look at, but everything about setting it up and using it is a ball. Try one. Don't get the Grace.

No Go With This Radio:
My AM radio picks up too much noise in the house, so I started streaming local radio stations on my laptop. Since I move my laptop around and wanted to listen in our kitchen, I thought an internet radio would do the trick. I looked around some months ago, but it seemed that $300 was a bit stiff, so when I saw the Grace at about $150, I thought "let's try it". I turned the unit on and it said it was searching for a network. The next menu should have several selections, including "connect to network". Instead, the display just blanked except for the default 12:00 time display near the top. Powered down several times and got the same result. I regard this as DOA. There was a small scratch on the unit, so I wonder if I was sharing someone else's grief. Return was relatively painless (Thanx Amazon!) with prepaid mailer. Guess I'll wait a little bit longer to see if quality of these things improves. It was a nice looking box, though....

Grace Wifi Radio - Great but needs some features:
The Grace Wifi Radio took just minutes to connect to an internet radio station. The sound was surprisingly good and the navigation was easy. It is easy to find any music or radio station you are in the mood for. Required a firmware upgrade to get the time to display when a radio station was playing. Pros - Large number of stations, Easy connection to Wifi, Sleep Timer, Stereo Earphone Output, Pandora, Elegant Look Cons - No battery backup for alarm, Mono sound (not stereo), No USB port (for $160 what do you expect?)