K**M
CDs play wonderfully - it won't replace a full size stereo but ...
This is my first DAB radio, so I can't compare it to others, but it is a total revelation. In addition, CDs play wonderfully - it won't replace a full size stereo but it is fantastic in a small room.Build quality is excellent (at the price, you'd hope for that) and the finish quality matches that of a Steinway piano.I haven't yet used all the features (and probably never shall), and my initial browse of the manual made it seem quite intimidating compared to a simple radio or CD player.In practice, after just a few minutes it became intuitive and I suspect that I will not need the manual to explore the other functionalities. It is extremely well thought-out. A sparse number of buttons whose purpose in the various modes of operation are just, well, obvious.
A**R
Very pleased with produce
Arrived within hours - or so it seemed. Very pleased with produce, good sound and easy to use. Also, very good price from this dealer
N**N
Frustrating to use
This is a review of the Roberts Bluetune 200 which was almost entitled: ‘Nearly threw the damn thing out the window!’ such was the frustration engendered by this good but flawed product. Don’t be fooled by other reviews - it is not easy to use, and I'm a UX (User eXperience) specialist.This device isn’t made by Bose, Apple or B&O and you’ll know it once you use it. Superficially, it’s an attractive piece of tech with excellent build quality, a wide range of features and priced competitively…in black - in white it’s £100 more. Euphemistically it’s deemed a ‘music centre, which is a misnomer. This is a high-end bedroom radio-alarm clock that plays CDs and has Bluetooth. So while this could be positioned in any room, with its prominent digital display, alarms and low flat form-factor it’s unquestionably intended for the bedroom. Here’s the problem; No one at Roberts (and most reviewers) knows what good usability is. Usability is the art/science of making something easy and intuitive to use, aka User-Experience or UX. It's not immediately apparent, but when absent makes itself known time and again when you try to use your tech.This fundamental consideration ensures that a product is easy, intuitive and ideally fun to use. This Roberts is not. Waking to Zoe Ball’s breakfast show I nearly threw it through the window. Not Zoe’s fault - I just fancied a bit of Jazz FM. But the Bluetune 200 won’t let you, because you’re in the 60 minute ‘alarm’ period. I tried everything over successive minutes, even the ever-reliable switching it off and on. But on page ?? of the manual it states stations cannot be changed during this period. Unbelievable in 2019. But the frustration doesn’t stop there. Roberts gives you a large LED display that rather considerately, is dimmable by 7 increments. But adjacent to this is a permanent blue ‘searchlight’ on the front, so that in standby mode (i.e. throughout the night) it illuminates the bedroom like a fixed lighthouse beacon. With all the studies on blue light and the importance of darkness for REM sleep etc, it really is stupefyingly incompetent. Apple were thinking about this stuff over 15 years ago! I’ve had to apologise to my wife (for whom I bought this) as we’ve resorted to putting the 64 page instruction manual to best use by blocking the relentless display. Which means we can’t see the time. So it's a shame that with something obviously designed to like nice, which it does, it requires a bit of black sticky tape on the front.In terms of sound it’s okay. Not great - it’s a bit boomy and muddled in the midrange but what you might reasonably expect at this price point. CDs sound better than DAB. It DOES NOT have a ‘graphic equaliser’, it has a range of pre-defined tonal settings like ‘pop’, ‘jazz’ etc.The functionality is extensive. It can charge your phone (slowly) in standby via its rear USB socket, which is useful. The Bluetooth streaming works really well. The CD sound is good. The remote control isn’t; Again, who didn’t think about this? It can even record programmes off the radio, which although probably not high on demand is undeniably a nice feature. Whether you’d actually want to though is doubtful, as I suspect it’s very challenging. And this is the main problem with the Bluetune 200. In stripping the unit’s physical controls down to just nine buttons with a single dial, Roberts is embracing modernity and the simple-is-good aesthetic. But if you’re going to adopt this approach (and it’s an increasingly necessary one) you’d better have a vertical design philosophy in place. Roberts clearly hasn’t, so whilst it looks slick it’s a bit of a pig to use, with buttons that are multifunctional (context sensitive) and everything buried in menus and sub-routines. However, in fairness to Roberts this problem is widespread, which is why once reliable Japanese consumer brands are always playing catch up, with their products still using last century paradigms. They just don’t get usability and UX. So in essence, the 200 looks like a 21st century Apple product but behaves like a turn-of-the-century Motorola. Great if you like fiddling around but rubbish if you don’t.Roberts need to get their act in gear and issue a firmware update that enables an actual night time mode, undoes the radio station lock-in each morning and perhaps a folded A3 overview plan of the extensive menu architecture. Despite Roberts’ insistence that you ‘Read the manual first’ no one’s going to spend 3 hours dredging through 64 tedious pages. Just make it like it should work. Intuitively! So it’s a five star concept that through carelessness became a three star product.
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2 weeks ago
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