Roberts Revival PETITE FM/DAB/DAB+ Digital Radio with Bluetooth, Duck Egg

I bought this for use in my camper van because it's very small, the battery lasts, it looks cute and came in a colour that complements the interior. It sounds amazing in the van and also in my office (although I hadn't planned to use it there). It's so much better than I'd have imagined for such a small thing and gives a nice sound even in a fairly large room. I'm delighted with it. Some reviews have complained about the aerial wire, but I find that it works really well - I've used a bit of washi tape to stick it onto the window frame (can be easily moved) and it gets a great DAB signal. I gave 5 stars for the sound quality - not because it's the best sound in the world, but because, in relation to its size I think it does an amazing job and sounds rich and clear. Even though there are many cheaper options, the balance of sound, style, size and battery life makes this the perfect combination for me.

I bought this radio to listen to Radio4 in the bathroom of a morning. So my requirements was something with excellent battery life, good sound quality for a medium sized room and would be nice to be able to play podcasts over Bluetooth when I fancy a wallow in the bath. So as is traditional, I'll lead with my Pros: 1) I knew it was 'small', but I was quite taken aback by how small it actually was. It's exceptionally cute and feels very well made. Feels like a small pleather brick in your hand. 2) Sounds amazing. Rich, but balanced. That "Bass radiator" isn't just marketing - sounds way better than the Sony its replaced, despite that having a speaker at least twice the diameter. 3) Battery life is indeed great. My Cons (not deal-breakers, but every possible annoyance I could think of): 1) As has been mentioned by others, "the controls are wrong". I'd have liked the wheel click to turn on/off and turning it to adjust the volume (or cycle through pre-sets). Then leave the buttons around it to secondary uses like changing the station, saving pre-sets etc. Instead volume and power are on the buttons around the dial. I'm never going to use the part of the UI that actually feels nice and tactile. 2) But maybe I'm not the target user, maybe they were targeting the user that likes flicking between their favourite radio stations? Again - they failed. Spinning the dial does let you choose radio stations, but presents a long list of *all* stations. You can set presets for the stations that you like, but to find them you have to hold (not push) the dial button down, then click again to choose preset option, then scroll through your preset and click to select it. My best guess is that they designed the UI to get people listening as simply as possible (labelled buttons for power & volume, and traditional tuning knob to change station) - but surely presets, along with volume and power should be the quickest things to get to. Feels like this was designed to be given to your aged grandmother who likes the Roberts name, and doesn't like menus. Just clicking the button just changes the display info for the station (something you're surely going to do less often than switching between presets) 3) You need to select bluetooth mode, to connect using bluetooth. Minor annoyance, but I'm used to a Pure clock radio which when I connect my phone to it, guesses I might want to listen to bluetooth (and when I disconnect, goes back to whatever it was doing before). The Roberts makes you click to choose a bluetooth input first, and then allows the connection. i.e. If I'm wallowing in the bath with my phone, and The Archers comes on, I need to click a button on the radio to play a podcast, and then cycle through the inputs again to get it back to playing the radio afterwards. 4) Radio doesn't get that loud. 70% volume is perfect for my bathroom - but this isn't a "large room filling" bluetooth speaker (not that it ever pretended to me). 5) The external aerial is a piece of wire that plugs in on a phono-jack. I don't need an aerial at all as I've got decent DAB reception - but I can't think of a good reason they didn't go with a telescoping metal aerial. If I leave the wire attached, it looks a bit messy. If I remove it, I'm worried I'm going to lose it. Would have much prefered to just have a metal aerial tidily tucked and attached on the back, which I could extend many years later if I need to. 6) Micro-USB recharge socket and it takes 6 hours to recharge. USB-C could have been faster and is what anything I've bought recently uses. 7) Doesn't have any sound output, apart from the speaker (can't listen on BT earbuds or plug it into external speakers). It does have an aux-in jack, but I'm bemused as to what this might be used for (unless you're still rocking a cassette walkman) 8) Can't get time displayed full-screen (it just sits in little type in the top corner). Would have been a nice option for me as a bathroom radio, as I know what I'm listening to. 9) Text scrolls *very* slowly, and no option to speed this up in settings (surely that wouldn't have been too hard?) Please don't let the far longer list of cons put you off - I gave this 5 stars and love it. I bought it as it topped a lot of "which portable DAB+ to buy" lists, and it's rightly there at #1. But, thought it best to focus on the reasons why this might not be the best radio "for you".

I was a bit dubious about this radio having read other people's reviews, but I absolutely love it. It's easy to set up and use. The sound quality is excellent. I live in a poor reception area but found the flexible wire aerial works fine and is very practical because it doesn't get in the way like a rigid aerial. The battery lasts ages and the radio is easy to carry around. I just charge it up like I do my phone. When you set the Sleep function, the sound fades out gradually at the set time. (Another radio I had, the sound went off suddenly which would wake me up.) The display light can be set really low so it is not intrusive, but still readable. The radio is beautiful to look at - lovely design. Full User Manual available on the Roberts website.

I feel like this could have been absolutely 5+ stars had the makers just tweaked a few things here & there. A lot of other reviewers agree with all of my grumbles so you do wonder why they weren’t thought of when designing this product? That aside…I still can’t get over how powerful & BIG sounding this radio speaker is for such a wee thing! It really was quite more petite than I expected, so I was concerned the sound quality would match the wee size but I was thankfully proved absolutely wrong: this has a big, warm, sound with a satisfying amount of bass - I was most impressed. I totally love the retro design & the colour range - they have got it spot on. However here’s the wee niggles I have - the big dial sadly doesn’t turn the radio speaker on/off or turn the volume up. Maybe it’s a personal preference but I find there’s something very satisfying about being able to dial the volume UP on a radio/speaker, so that is a shame. Also the preset option is way more faffier than it should be. I often try to get to check my preset radio stations and end up getting so frustrated I just manually scroll through the radio stations (this is what your big dial button does) and lastly the DAB aerial is all but useless. With my other DAB radio (a cheap Tesco one) I never had any issues with reception so I always assumed I had good DAB signal in my area/in this part of the house, turns out I was wrong. So after failing to even get any DAB reception unless I sat the radio somewhere almost out of reach in my bathroom, I ended up buying the plug-in external, telescopic aerial. It’s much better but still every now & then my signal isn’t great quality. As a Bluetooth speaker it’s great - the size makes it super portable & the battery life so far has been really good, so all in all I am a fan but maybe just not the biggest fan…

La radio es muy bonita y se adivina bien construida y sólida. La calidad del sonido es excelente dado su pequeño tamaño. Si, es bastante pequeña. No obstante, eso facilita su portabilidad de un sitio a otro de la casa. La batería, recargable vía USB, dura bastante. El almacenamiento o grabado de emisoras en la memoria no es muy intuitivo, pero no supone un gran obstáculo. El único pero es que si se recibe mal una emisora en algún lugar de la casa la radio se pone automáticamente en modo búsqueda hasta que la encuentra, lo que aveces es algo irritante pues puede tardar un rato o incluso sintonizador una emisora diferente. Esto no sucede cuando la recepción de la emisora es buena. Trae una antena de cable, pero se le puede poner otra rígida y telescopica en la entrada Jack de 3,5mm como así lo he hecho a un precio ridículo. En fin, buena calidad de sonido en una monada de radio retro que, además, se puede utilizar como altavoz Bluetooth. Nota: la radio viene del Reino Unido. El precio pagado es el final, no se me aplicaron aranceles de aduanas ni otra carga adicional. Imagino que ya estaban incluidas en el precio.

Me gusta todo. Es pequeño con un diseño de 10 y muy práctico. Se recarga a través de un cable USB y la batería dura bastante.

Suena estupendamente para ser tan pequeña. Contento con la compra.

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