Designing an audio product presents manufacturers with a dilemma. Do they forego convenience and build a great sounding but bulky system, or sacrifice audio quality in favour of a smaller footprint?

Thankfully, Revo's new K2 iOS dock, radio and audio streamer makes no such compromises.

The K2's square-shaped base with sides of just 10.6cm and two alarm settings make it ideal for your bedside table. But its brushed aluminium bodywork, black rubber details and invisible-until-lit OLED means it looks good just about anywhere.

Its 30-pin connector can be retracted when not in use, and can hold any iPod or iOS device, including an iPad. DAB/DAB+ and FM with RDS radio formats are covered, as is internet radio, Last.FM (a month's free trial supplied) and streaming audio from your Mac or any DNLA-compliant source.

You can join it to a home network through Ethernet or Wi-Fi, and connect it to an existing stereo setup through RCA or digital optical out. There's also AUX-in, a headphone socket and a composite video-out port for watching iPod videos or slideshows on your TV. A handheld remote augments the neat on-board buttons.

Sound quality is excellent. Its stereo effects are surprisingly good given the narrow form factor, and thanks to the rear-mounted bass port, the low end of the sound spectrum is clear and crisp. The audio as a whole is complete and lively, with a detailed top end, bouncy midtones and a near 360-degree dispersion.

The user interface deserves a mention too. Revo products are famed for their accessibility, and the K2 is no exception – steady improvements make it the best yet. If you have a sound system you're not using to its fullest because you can't be bothered to keep dipping into the instructions, you should have bought a Revo.

Revo's K2 delivers a sound that belies its small form factor. It's possible to get more out of bigger, more expensive systems, but for a compact £300 device, it's among the best we've heard.

The Q2 brings the content-rich world of internet radio into your home with style. And because this button-free 10cm cube incorporates a rechargeable Li-ion battery you can take it outside, too – as long as your Wi-Fi coverage matches your territorial ambitions.

It's easy to use, thanks to an accelerometer similar to that built into the Wii controller. Placing the cube onto one of four sides selects a different station. Tilting the radio up or down adjusts volume, while the face-down position shuts it up.

And from a single charge, you can expect to get over 10 hours of moderate-level listening.

There are no physical buttons to trap dust or malfunction. The only switch, on the rear panel, turns the thing off altogether.

Alongside this are a small bass-reflex port and an earphone socket. Behind the speaker grille lurk LEDs showing power and connection.

Sound quality is great for the size. The Q2 goes far louder than expected, without unacceptable levels of distortion. Its speaker's range is unexpectedly wide, too.

If you don't like the swirly floral motif decorating our review sample, there's a choice of other patterns and styles available including plain white, black, or green, and a floral pink. Lovely.

However, you only get an immediate choice of four stations or podcasts from a choice of thousands. To change them, you have to plug the Q2 into a computer via its USB port, and use downloadable software to assign new stations to these 'presets'.

Tivoli, you may recall, made a big splash by pretty much re-inventing the high-quality table radio about a decade ago. Its Model One combined high-quality RF engineering in its FM tuner section, with an unusually decent speaker to make sounds that rivals would aspire to live up to and even try to replicate.

Now, the new Model 10+ aims to do something similar for DAB. The + in the name actually refers to DAB as in the USA and in some other territories they don't have DAB: FM and AM reception are common to all versions of the Model 10.

DAB, FM and AM

The Model One was all-analogue, but this one is mostly digital – digital tuning, digital user interface.

The critical FM and AM signal path is still analogue, though, to preserve Tivoli's reputation for quality and the auxiliary input at the rear of the unit is analogue too; you can connect an iPod with a normal audio cable but there's no dock as such.

Digital operation has brought the added function of RDS and also the convenience of a credit-card sized remote control.

Auto-tune in a good way

Operation is effected via a push-and-twist control on the top of the unit. Its default mode is as a volume control, but with a single brief push it becomes a tuning control and after a double push, it selects between sources. One gets used to this quickly enough, though it's not the most obvious thing at first.

The remote control adds easy access to a menu with various functions including basic tone controls, stereo/mono switching and a setting we found most useful, which adjusts the way the tuner scans when auto-tuning on FM. It can be set up to stop only at strong stations, which saves a lot of time in a more urban location, where most tuners would stop for lots of almost unlistenable stations.

Clearly better?

We loved the Model One and are delighted to report that the Model 10+ is very much in the same mould, with sound that has delightful clarity and naturalness, on both speech and music.

The Tivoli hallmark of well-above-average FM reception is certainly present and indeed, if one listens on headphones the FM sound is comparable with that of a decent hi-fi tuner.

The sound from the speaker(s) is a fine example of what can be achieved from small enclosures on a tight budget. As you'd expect, deep bass is mostly notable by its absence, but upper bass is well handled and after the first few seconds one doesn't really miss the lower stuff. This works particularly well with speech, of course – all the better because the critical band where bass merges into midrange is handled very well indeed, nicely even and non-resonant.

Music also benefits from this, no less than from the open and detailed treble, which retains most of its quality a surprising way off the axis of the speakers.

Musically convincing

As a result, any style of music plays with real conviction and a degree of realism that defies one's expectations of such a product, equally convincing in energetic, smoochy or intellectual moods.

Maximum loudness is limited, but the clarity makes the sound satisfying at a modest level and, unlike some less accomplished radios, the Model 10+ doesn't make one want to keep turning the level up in a (usually fruitless) search for some kind of satisfaction. DAB sounds decent, FM very impressive, even AM is not half bad. 10 out of 10+!

Best known for its classically styled desktop radios, Roberts has launched a feature packed contemporary radio, that retains the iconic 'Revival' look that keeps them selling by the truckload.

What makes this black-only beauty so special is its connectvity: FM; DAB; Wi-Fi internet radio; media streaming; USB-A and a traditional line-in.

So, not only are you spoilt for choice in terms of receiving broadcasts, you can also playback lossless audio files from your home computer, with all the portability that comes with a small 1kg box. The 100-page manual explains all, but ours was ready in just five minutes.

A wireless, wireless

Calling this a 'radio' distinctly undersells it, but it's true, not least because its most impressive functions rely on wireless connection to a computer network and, hence, to the internet.

This at once means that you have access to not only your local quota of DAB and FM stations, but also the 17,000 or so internet radio stations. Foreign radio, special interest stuff, or even your usual fare which may very well be available in better quality via the internet than on DAB.

The bitrate may be the same, but the coding systems used for internet radio are generally more efficient than DAB's MPEG 2.

Personalised radio

Since you're connected to your home network, it makes sense that the Revival iStream can also play audio files on your home computer, as long as they are the right format. Obviously that includes the usual MP3 and also MP4/AAC and, we were delighted to discover, FLAC as well.

WAV doesn't seem to be, though, nor are other lossless formats. It's not that it matters so much for a little portable, just that true audiophiles are likely to have their digital music library in an uncompressed or lossless format anyway.

There's also the option of tuning to the subscription 'personalised radio' service at last.fm, and a USB socket on the top of the unit allows you to plug in suitable music players or memory sticks.

Modern traditional values

The retro look of the Revival iStream conceals the inevitable hi-tech innards, though the loudspeaker is nothing fancy – a single drive unit, bass reflex-loaded by the case. The back side of the case hinges open to give access to the battery compartment.

On the top, the layout manages to be nearly as retro as the rest of the case, with a pair of knobs and some push-buttons. The knobs are twist-and-push controls, which look after tuning, input selection and also a selection of options in menus, while the push-buttons bring up the main menu, give information choices and so on.

Shock verdict

When we reviewed the non-iStream Revival a few issues ago we were rather disappointed by its dull sound. Either the iStream was always different or Roberts agreed with us, as this radio seems very well balanced on the whole.

It's not the cleanest, or least coloured, or loudest table radio we've ever heard, but it does have a nice general quality that makes the most of lively music, does a fair job of quieter, more subtle stuff, and reproduces voices very well with excellent intelligibility.

Bass is obviously limited, while treble consistency is good off axis. Maximum loudness is fine in a room of about 20 square metres and we didn't detect any obvious rattles or whistles from the cabinet.

There are quite a few competing products around, but as internet-compatible table radios go this is good value in terms of both features and sound.

The writer of this review is certainly not the only person to have walked into a shop and asked, in all innocence, "How much is that second-hand Roberts in the window?" only to be put right with the answer, "It's new."

Roberts has always been the king of the retro, making radios that were straight out of its 1950s catalogue, generations after that decade had ended. Or at least, radios that bore a strong external resemblance to those trusty old models.

100 hours

Long gone are the 10-transistor circuits of yesteryear. The current FM models are powered by integrated circuits and this DAB model probably includes about as many transistors in its construction than Roberts used in an entire year in the early days of the 'tranny'.

The case is made of MDF and there's a text display on the top: tuning of both channels is digital (the usual twist'n'push control) and the push-buttons are momentary action types, rather than the latching ones used on the originals. But the overall effect is well done, complete with carrying handle and the use of four large 'D cell' batteries, which gives the RD60 a playing time potentially in the region of 100 hours.

Creature comforts

Other modern creature comforts include a couple of mini-jack sockets for headphones and line output, another for line input, a USB socket for firmware upgrades and full text information on both DAB and FM. There are presets and a useful one-touch 'Favourite' button to bring up your main station in a single press.

Casual duty

One doesn't expect a small, mono radio to sound amazing. Nevertheless, the use of headphones does allow the electronics to give of their best (in stereo) and frankly the DAB performance of this model is more than acceptable. FM's not bad, either if you can arrange the antenna for good reception. (You could in principle attach an external antenna, but who on earth is going to go to that trouble?)

Compared with a dedicated, hi-fi, FM tuner, clarity is lacking, but it's perfectly listenable for speech and casual music duty. But that's not the most likely mode of operation and the internal loudspeaker is far more to the point.

Its success varies considerably from station to station, for the simple reason that it sounds extremely dull. That's easy to verify by moving from headphones to speaker and it's true even when listening on axis, even more so when off to the side.

One can mitigate this somewhat, bizarrely, by opening the back of the radio (it's hinged with a simple catch, to allow for access to the battery compartment) and listening from behind, but then the bass goes all to pot because the case is designed as a simple reflex-loaded speaker enclosure.

Ear-splitting

Bass and midrange are not bad tonally with the radio conventionally closed up and we were quite impressed at how loud it will go without any obvious rattles. The dull treble is most obvious on stations such as Radios 3 and 4, but works much better on highly-compressed pop stations which tend to be ear-splittingly bright.

Detail is fair for the breed and it's reasonably easy to hear everything that's going on, but things do tend to sound a bit flat dynamically. Of course, on the stations with the best subjective tonal balance, they are a bit flat.

We're torn between admiration for the looks and general build quality of this radio and reservations about its sound. On the whole, we prefer the sound of the fine models from Vita Audio, but there's a certain charm inherent in a Roberts and we could probably get used to it...

Standalone 'real hi-fi ' tuners (as opposed to table radios and so on) are getting distinctly thin on the ground these days. No doubt one significant reason for that is continuing uncertainty over whether and when FM will be switched off, so if you're about to spring for a tuner it certainly makes sense to get one that's compatible with both analogue and digital broadcasts.

This new model, the T-R650DAB from TEAC is just such a beast. It's actually a full three-band tuner, with good old AM included. And in a further link with the old ways, it has separate FM and DAB tuner sections. This is significant.

Many current tuners (especially table radios) have a single tuner which pulls in both kinds of radio signal, doing quite a lot of the FM decoding digitally. That looks good on paper, but we've yet to hear a unit of that type that has really good FM performance.

Typically, there's more background 'hash' than an all-analogue tuner provides and performance in the face of the insidious multi-path distortion is compromised. Audio buffering Instead, TEAC uses a typical modern tuner head from KSE, which includes basically the complete RF-to-audio circuit in one little module.

The main circuit board carries little more than power supply components, some control functions and the most basic audio buffering. As you'd expect, FM implements RDS and, of course, DAB includes various bits of text information as standard, so there's plenty to look at on the display.

DAB's Dynamic Range Control is available and there's a numeric signal strength meter which doesn't tell one much in absolute terms, but is useful for optimising the position of an antenna.

Operation isn't quite the same as most other DAB radios as the 'Enter' button is separate from the tuning knob and there's a DAB feature we haven't seen before, manual tuning by frequency. Most users, however, will do as we did and activate the scan and station list functions.

No ifs or buts

DAB tuners don't tend to sound much different from one another, and this one seems to follow that rule of thumb. Actually, we felt it was perhaps just a touch clearer and more open than available comparisons, but really there's very little in it.

Its radio-side performance on DAB is also par for the course and we had no trouble at all getting breakup-free reception from a casually draped wire antenna. In other words, this is a good DAB tuner with no ifs or buts.

Roof-top antenna

FM is much harder to optimise and here we felt the budget nature of the T-R650 does show a bit. For a start, it's quite fussy about signal strength and wouldn't give us an enjoyable stereo output, however hard we tried with an indoor antenna. We wouldn't expect truly noise-free reception under such conditions but some tuners can at least eliminate the roughest background noises.

Fed from our roof-top antenna, the sound improved considerably and background noise decreased to just a little above the minimum one can expect. However, even in this case, the sound remained a little coarse and edgy.

At this sort of price it seems rude to be too picky, but we recall better results from cheaper tuners of not very long ago.

Energetic

In terms of actual audio performance, the T-R650 is well-balanced tonally, with good, strong bass and decent treble too. It is at its best with energetic music, where its good rhythmic qualities are best appreciated.

For many listeners, DAB may well be the preferred option, all else being equal, with music which majors in subtlety and detail. At the very least, it's good to have the choice!

We felt positively sentimental unwrapping this little goody – an analogue-only tuner! It's been a while since we saw a new one of those round these parts.

The reason for that, of course, is that most tuners these days include DAB as well. Come to that, with DAB threatening to oust FM from the airwaves, is there any point to an analogue-only one?

Commercially, NAD no doubt justifies its investment in this new model via sales in countries where DAB has yet to make a mark (there are still plenty), but even in a UK context it still has plenty going for it.

DAB vs FM

First, despite the proliferation of digital-only stations, most of the stuff that anyone actually wants to listen to seems to be on analogue radio and most of the remainder is available online, often via play-on-demand (podcasts).

The argument over DAB versus FM sound quality is an old and static one, but suffice to say that many audiophiles still find FM the preferable option. In fact, FM's got a good few years left in it even by the most pessimistic estimates.

So if your old tuner has packed up, or you're looking to add low-cost FM to your system, then £220 seems perfectly sensible.

Blend function

As for the business of FM-only versus FM plus DAB, we're not alone in believing that if you really want the best performance from a bit of kit, you don't really want too much functionality shoehorned into it.

There will be compromises and cost-savings, not to mention the vexed issue of electrical interference, so keeping it simple is seldom bad news.

And simple is how the C426 goes. It has RDS, a remote control, RS-232 (the standard in electrical characteristics and timing of signals) and presets, but in basic terms it just receives AM and FM radio. A tiny front-end module feeds circuits based on recent dedicated integrated circuits on NAD's own board, all fed from a traditional all-analogue power supply.

The display does the basics very well and includes the usual rather optimistic signal-strength display. There's also a 'Blend' function which can be useful where stereo reception is marginal for noise performance.

Good signals

Our first impression of this tuner is distinctly positive. Intending to do no more than ensure it was basically functional, we hooked it up with literally a random piece of wire as the aerial and were astonished to hear pretty much acceptable sound – usually a tuner would be hideously noisy under such conditions.

Further testing confirms that this is a very sensitive design, ideally suited to troublesome locations. That's obviously a plus, but there's no direct link between RF-sensitivity and audio performance under conditions of a good signal. Happily, it seems that the latter is just as good as the former in this case.

Not only is the tonal balance unusually well judged, there is distinctly more detail than one often hears from FM radio. The major reason for that is that NAD has managed to reduce the low-level 'grain' that affects reception in all too many tuners, even when they are fed from a good antenna.

As a result, all those little details that live down near the noise floor become that much more obvious and music suddenly snaps and sparkles into life in a most gratifying way.

Pace and timing

Deep bass is another common weakness of FM, yet the C426 does very well, with clearly defined low notes from all manner of instruments.

Pace and timing are good, too, certainly among the best we've heard from a budget tuner. The very highest treble lacks some of the insight that the finest tuners can achieve, but at a fifth or less of what they cost we aren't really criticising, especially as images have well defined and stable width and depth.

This isn't just a very good budget tuner: it's a very good tuner, period.

Like Monitor Audio's Airstream 10, the Vita Audio radios originate from a loudspeaker manufacturer, though in this case Ruark set up a whole new brand for the purpose.

It's not been around many years but has rapidly built up a fine reputation and we've certainly enjoyed testing the various Vita products that have come our way.

This new version of the original R1 radio has more power, the option of adding a battery pack for portability, a larger display and DAB+ compatibility, so that when DAB+ broadcasts start it will be ready. It also has tone and loudness controls, which we found a mixed blessing.

What it doesn't have is internet access of any kind, which doubtless explains (in part, at least) its lower price compared with the others here. It is available in high-gloss black or white, as well as the wood finish we received.

Overall, we found this the most sonically successful of the bunch. The FM reception is not quite as good as that of the Tivoli, but it's not bad (and the aerial is detachable, meaning that one could pretty easily fit a better one), and via DAB or the line input the sound seems to us to have just the right combination of punch, extension and midrange neutrality.

There's enough gain and power on tap to play satisfyingly loud in a medium-size room, but the crucial thing in the R1's favour is that at any level the sound has detail and a really plausible wholesomeness that just seems to escape many such products. Engaging and very enjoyable.

When is a radio not a radio? First, when it's an internet radio (which strictly uses wires, not radio waves), and second, when it does so many other things that the term 'radio' only touches the surface.

But in two ways this is a 'real' radio, as it receives both DAB and FM and it also connects to your internet router wirelessly, ie. by radio.

Among various other features, by far the most striking is its ability to play music off your home computer, again wirelessly. Close behind that must surely be the user interface, which is a very natty touch-sensitive screen, just like the ones on many current mobile phones, complete with swipe-sensing.

Pure has been at the forefront of digital radio developments since it got in on the DAB act very near the start, but this is by some way the most advanced product we've seen from the company. Its real beauty is that it does so many internet-and computer connected things, but it isn't a computer.

A computer is a wonderful device, but it's essentially a general-purpose device and, as such, invariably compromised in terms of single-purpose use, such as audio.

You have to do tiresome stuff like launching applications and fiddling with settings and although with experience this soon enough becomes second nature, there's just something a lot more satisfying about a designed-for-purpose, audio-only box.

So this funky-looking unit does some clever things. It even features 'apps', just like a mobile phone (actually a lot of its functionality resembles that of a smartphone): currently you can access Facebook and Twitter and I dare say more is to come.

Sound quality

If you've heard any of the really upmarket table radios such as those from Meridian, you won't be blown away by the Sensia. It does OK with everyday radio fare including compressed pop and speech, but with more subtle stuff it lacks both precision and gain.

There seems to be quite a lot of raw power on tap, but with classical music the maximum volume setting just doesn't seem to be quite high enough. The sound is a little coloured, especially in the treble which is on the dull side overall but has some distinctly audible resonances in it.

Of course, you can always use headphones, or take an output from the headphone socket and use it to drive an external amp and speakers. This is actually quite an impressive experience and it's most gratifying to hear how good the quality is on many internet radio stations. Maybe not quite as good as well-done FM but perfectly listenable.

It's also encouraging that high-rate MP3 files can be satisfactorily streamed wirelessly from the computer. Uncompressed WAV files stutter a bit, suggesting there's not quite enough bandwidth, but 320kbps MP3 seems fine.

The Sensia doesn't seem to recognise any losslessly compressed formats – I couldn't check with the instructions as they are online only and lack rather a lot of detail.

Operating the Sensia is a very pleasant experience, while the 'Flowserver' software that runs on the PC, which is acting as the media server was easy to install and set up. It's certainly a very impressive piece of kit and certain to be a talking point.

If the sound is a little disappointing, it's only fair to bear in mind that £250 is not a lot of money and Pure doesn't claim this as a super-audiophile product. However, as a superbly-featured radio it has a lot to offer.

Introduction

The smart and compact Monitor Audio AirStream 10 looks futuristic and classic in appearance, is actually one of the most all-round capable audio devices we've come across in quite some time.

It receives DAB and FM radio and thanks to the wonders of wi-fi (or, if you prefer, a wired Ethernet connection), it receives Internet radio and accesses music on your home network, via any suitable router – we used a BT Home Hub for review purposes.

If that's all a bit too new-fangled for you, you can always plug in a portable music player or other source via the auxiliary input.

Some of this is easier to set up than other bits, but if your computer has at some point in its life been set up to belong to a network, then it should be pretty straightforward to get the AirStream to connect and recognise music files.

Connecting to Internet radio is effortless, though the delay in 'tuning' in to a station can be a bit trying – this isn't a function of the AirStream though, it's caused by the need for buffering data which takes some time.

The AirStream 10 can sit on the long thin face opposite the control buttons, or on the largest face so that the speaker faces downwards, about 2cm from the supporting surface. In the case of the latter, treble is bound to suffer a bit, but the buttons are more accessible – certainly if you are using the unit as a bedside alarm or radio.

Operation is simple and, in fact, the automatic sorting of Internet radio stations by genre, location, and name, is just about the best way we've found yet of trawling through them. Some of them have a distinctly ropey quality and 24kbps MP3 is obviously nothing remotely to do with hi-fi, but we did find some perfectly sonically acceptable examples from Azerbaijan and The Philippines, to name but two.

The fun is, pretty much literally, endless! Given the point already made about treble with the speaker facing downwards, we did most of our listening with it facing out, on or reasonably close to its axis.

Sound quality

Under such conditions the sound is fairly clear, though not quite as neutral or punchy as the best Tivoli and Vita Audio radios can offer.

On the other hand, there's a decent amount of power on hand and the lack of rattles within the unit makes it a good choice for playing loud. The mono loudspeaker is not such a huge drawback as the stereo of most one-box units is nothing to get excited about and headphone and auxiliary outputs are stereo.

With the speaker facing downwards, the most obvious drawback is in the reduced comprehensibility of the spoken voice. Music is a little dulled, but one still gets the gist. It's tempting to compare FM, DAB and Internet versions of the same station.

FM performance is a bit so-so, tending to sound rather grainy, however meticulously one fiddles with the antenna, but Internet radio is catching up fast with DAB – in some cases sounding noticeably better.

Interestingly, the AirStream's display tells you what bitrate and codec is in use for each station. Internet radio is still in its infancy, but has taken off like a rocket.

Dedicated hardware like this lags a little, but we look forward to more appearing. The attraction of Internet listening without needing a computer to be switched on is obvious and this product fills the need well.