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Perstel DR-301 handheld pocket DAB digital radio review
Our review
The DR-301 shuns ipod-esque styling: the wide unit offers a multidirectional controller next to its large, backlit screen. The DR-301 searches out digital stations manually or by a full scan of Band III (and Band L as an option - the UK model may be Band III only) and it's simply a case of selecting a station using the left/right controller directions. Up/down controls the volume and a central selector brings up a scrollable list of stations for browsing.
The Perstel DR-301 offers a one-minute radio rewind feature - press a button and the DR-301 will skip back by about a minute, in case you missed a 'phone number or the name of the song. The Perstel's "killer app", though, is the radio record feature. Pop an SD card into the top of the Dr-301 (and surely lose the tiny card reader cover since it's not permanently attached to the radio), hit the record button and the Perstel Dr-301 saves the programme in MP2 format to the card. Unfortunately there's no timer for recording, so you can't schedule programmes to record, but it's an extremely useful feature nonetheless.
Reception with the DR-301 is, unsurprisingly, far better than the Bluenote and pulls in the best signal than any other of its stablemates. Reception, of course, depends very much on where you use the DR-301, but in strong signal areas the radio indicates almost perfect reception. Sure, the DR-301 uses the headphone cable as the aerial and, as a result, it's longer than standard cables (and L-Band is picked up by a separate, tiny telescopic aerial), but even with the cable coiled up there shouldn't be a problem in strong signal areas. Walking between highrise buildings in Sydney, the radio does stutter, but during my own tests it never fell completely silent - although there was some burbling as the 301 struggled to rebuild a poor signal.
The FM receiver is limited to three presets (as is DAB), but it's fairly quick to scan up and down the band. RDS station naming and text is a noticeably missing from the specification.
The music player lets you play WMA, MP3 and saved-from-DAB MP2 files. Unfortunately, the Perstel's firmware is a little flakey and the unit locked up on several occasions when trying to play back saved MP2 files and after deleting files: the batteries must be removed before you can get going again. Luckily, the DR-301 is fitted with a USB (1.1) port, allowing any firmware upgrades to be ported across to the radio as well as allowing PC users to transfer music files across. The DR-301 is recognised as a removable device in Windows, making file transfer almost painless.
The music player also has a number of preset sound modes, but strangely these are unavailable when listening to the radio.
The large display shows multiplex name, bit-rate information and notes any secondary services. The scrolling speed can be adjusted - as can the text font size. A quirky feature is that, when choosing smaller text, DAB text is scrolled on two lines, with the information on the second line slightly delayed from the first - so you get two chances to view content.
The Perstel DR-301 is certainly a capable radio - the international version has traffic and news checkboxes and programme type search - and I would guess these will feature on the UK version. It's also one of the first to offer rewind and record features - a great achievement.
It will be interesting to see how quickly the firmware upgrade is announced: when performing a manual scan, it's possible to selects past the next station onto the next multiplex, as the same button is programmed to do both jobs. The record button starts and stops recording - why doesn't the central play/stop button do this job?
The hold feature is a bit clunky - turn the ring and a large "hold" icon appears momentarily on the display, resetting the DAB text to the start of the message. It works, but it's not pretty.
The battery compartment cover is also a little flimsy and the third AA battery sits proud after installation until the cover is replaced - presumably to help with a battery change.
The DR-301 also has problems with decoding bit-rates above 192kbit/s. This isn't a problem in the UK, of course, where only Radio 3 broadcasts at 192kbit/s stereo. In Sydney, however, where ABC Classic FM plays out at 224kbit/s stereo, the DR-301 inserts momentary dropouts every few seconds.
To criticise the Perstel too much would be churlish: most of the (admittedly minor) problems can be solved with a firmware upgrade. That it offers recording, rewind and music player functions in a handheld unit is reason to shout about. It's the sort of functionality listeners have been crying out for in kitchen radios since the arrival of The Bug. Perstel should be commended for launching such a sophisticated digital radio.
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Visitor reviews
" About the DAB radio...
" It is quite a competent receiver given that the headphones are the aerial, but it's not perfect (read as worse coverage than the same radio station broadcasting in analogue), however blame also lies with the broadcasters on that point. Although you can adjust the audio (EQ) settings whilst listening to the MP3 player this option is unavailable in the DAB radio. Every time you adjust the volume it resets the scrolling text back to the beginning,
" Aside from having three dedicated preset buttons on the radio (good idea) it also has the ability to store many many more presets in a list accessible via the menu. However, switching between the presets in your list and the ability to manually tune is unnecessarily clunky and could have been made much easier had they used the buttons on the front of the device more effectively.
" About the MP3 player...
" Oh dear oh dear, I have seen MP3 players costing £20 be more effective than this !! you can't even pause a tune, only stop. Navigating your own tunes is made difficult because the player has no list view, so you can only see one track at a time; this is very poor use of a full dot matrix screen.
" It leaves unnecessarily large gaps between tracks, although a lot of MP3 players do this (including the ipod), but only the cheapest are as bad as this!
" About the FM radio...
" Where do I start? It's almost as though they stuck the FM radio just to increase the feature count! It seems to be almost deaf to all but the very strongest of transmitters and even then success is not guaranteed. Tuning in London should find a multitude of transmissions both legal and illegal filling every spare nook and cranny of the waveband. The DR-301 can only find about five stations, most of which are coming from the same BBC transmitter! Finally, RDS would have been a nice touch on that lovely big matrix screen it has, but sadly not included.
" It uses 3 AA batteries and in all honesty they don't last very long at all; rechargeables and a mains adapter would have been nice.
" If you are still interested in this, and you're a traveller around Europe, you will need the 301 VF model because it is Band III and L-Band. "
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