Noxon iRadio - TechRadar UK

Britain is a witheringly depressing place in the depths of winter. It gets dark at about two in the afternoon, and cold rain lashes our weary heads on the way home.

But Noxon has an answer; a small, shiny device that might just brighten up our days. That's right - a digital internet radio box that allows us to beam unknowing foreigners' music into our homes! En garde!

While switching on a live stream of Kingston, Jamaica's quite fantastic Sun FM as the skies blacken in Blighty is a fantastic wheeze, our initial hopes for the iRadio were dashed early on, for a plethora of reasons. Chief among these is the fact that we can already listen to obscure musical flotsam on our PCs.

Then there's the twocolour LCD display and buttons, which are just horrid, and make selecting podcasts or changing channels harder than juggling mercury. There's only the one speaker, too, which seems a bit mean - but at least there's the option to connect the iRadio to some stereo speakers, your headphones or a separates hi-fi like your old man used to have in the front room.

If you were in the market for a digital radio, you'd want more than this plasticky, mono squawkbox for 133 precious clams. Is it the Dansette of the red-button generation? No, but it's not far off.