Logitech Squeezebox Radio (black)

Pros: Ability to set an unlimited number of alarms. Seemless interface with Sirius, Pandora, Rhapsody and thousands of internet radio stations.

Cons: Sound is a little bit tinny when using the headphone jack to put through external self-powered speakers.

Summary: I have had at least one dozen wifi radios of all size and description. By far the best products have been from Logitech. The Squeezebox Boom was superior to all the units out there and still is. However, it does have a rather large footprint for scarce nightstand real estate. But the place where Logitech excels is in their web interface. It seems like much ado about nothing, after all, people have been setting alarm clocks and clock radios for nearly a century. However, the Squeezeboxnetwork.com, now known as mysqueezebox.com is a quantum leap in getting jolted out of bed in the morning. If you lose your wifi connection during the night, don't fear, the Squeezebox radio will go off with a beep at the appointed time. This back up is of extreme importance when it comes to trashing your existing clock radio.

Using either mysqueezebox.com or the downloadable squeeze server, you can set an unlimited number of alarms with different music sources. This works great for me as I go to different offices on different days. Those 5am days demand AC-DC. The 7:30am days start off with a little Santana. And then on the weekends, those are the lazy days for which I get gently awoken by classical tunes at 8am.

The internal speaker is noticably inferior to the Boom but this is to be expected as it is much smaller and therefore the speaker is lighter weight and mono only. What was surprising is that using the external headset jack plugged into my AudioEngine 5's produced an inferior result compared to the same configuration as the Boom. The highs were clipped and the lows just didn't resonate. I guess they are using different AD generators and it shows. Audiophiles will have to wait for the Squeezebox Touch which promises to have a 24 bit AD converter.

But with that minor annoyance aside, you can't beat the huge clock display, which can be seen even if you're vision is 20-500. And then the nice art work that pops up on the small 2" color LCD screen is a nice touch, even if a might small. You can watch your FLICKR account streams and album cover artwork.

So if the Boom rate a 9.5, I would give the Radio a 9.0. Either way, waking up in the morning will never be quite the same.