PURE Siesta DAB/FM Clock Radio – Black
Posted by Notcot on May 15, 2010 in Portable Sound & Vision |
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My Pure Siesta arrived yesterday and I’m very happy with it!
I recently bought a Pure ONE for the kitchen, which is excellent too. Pure seem to have taken the best bits of their more expensive, wood-cased models, and put them into plastic cases for those of us who want quality but don’t want to pay quite so much. You don’t get quite the same looks, but the sound from both units is pretty damn good, especially considering they’re mono units. They’re better with speech, with a nice, warm sound, but they don’t disgrace themselves with music either.
The Siesta looks great, though the display is the one thing I’m not completely in love with: the clock is just slightly too small for peering at in the middle of the night, and being a backlit LCD it’s less than readable when looking down on the unit from above. The scrolling text display is a bit “jumpy” too, though it can be set to display other things if it annoys you.
There’s a headphone socket at back on the top, so if you want to fall asleep to Test Match Special without disturbing anyone else, you can!
Sensitivity seems to have improved a lot since my first DAB radio a couple of years back. Both the Siesta and the ONE pull in everything on the London multiplexes, even in our basement (in the ONE’s case even with the aerial down!) at nearly 100% signal quality, whereas my old radio couldn’t even do this with the aerial up… in the garden…
I read a review elsewhere from someone complaining that the alarms were tricky to set. The process is a bit “involved” but very logical, and the flipside is that you get a lot of versatility: four alarms, each of which can be daily, weekdays, weekends, Saturday, Sunday or once only to eiteher DAB, FM or the beeper.
I was a little disappointed that, given this flexibility, it’s not possible to set which station you want to wake up with and are stuck with the one you last listened to. So, if you want to drift off to sleep with the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4 and wake up with Chris Moyles on Radio 1… you can’t. Nor can you get up to one station and your partner have a lie-in and wake up to something else an hour later.
I’m sure this kind of thing can be changed later if enough people want it, and the Siesta, like most of Pure’s new range, has upgradable software via a USB port using a PC (but not a Mac, unfortunately).
One small point: the DAB we currently have in the UK will eventually be superseded by DAB+ using a more efficient audio “codec” (HE-AAC v2 as opposed to MPEG1 Audio Layer 2, for those who are interested). Though most existing DAB radios aren’t compatible with the new DAB+, DAB transmissions will continue for many years to come. The Siesta has been designed so that it can be upgraded to the new codec at the appropriate time (though sadly my ONE can’t).
All in all this is a terrific radio for the bedroom and the worth every penny. It looks great, doesn’t take up too much room and goes more than loud enough for most bedrooms.
Rating: 4 / 5
Clock radios tend to be quite personal devices – each buyer has their own particular list of must-have features. I already had a DAB radio for use in the house and I’ve been looking for a DAB clock radio for the bedroom. Until now I didn’t like the price or features of the various offerings. The Pure Siesta is the first one that seemed to fit the bill.
The features I really like are:
- It’s a DAB! That means nice clear reception for stations like 5-Live which are otherwise available only on MW. You can also listen to a much wider range of stations. It also means that you don’t have to set the clock – it does it all automatically.
- Nice clear display. Pure’s other clock radio uses their standard 2 line display which is OK for normal radios but not great for a clock radio. The Siesta’s display is nice and large, contains lots of detail and its brightness adjusts automatically depending on the surrounding light so it doesn’t keep you awake by being too bright. It’s a backlit LCD type so the viewing angles won’t please everyone but I think it’s good.
- Lots of alarms – well 3 to be precise. Each one is very flexible and can wake you up to DAB, FM or a tone alarm.
- You can set the wake-up volume of the radio alarms. This was a key feature for me. This enables you to go to sleep to a low volume radio but wake up to a much louder volume.
- The buttons are well laid out and it’s easy enough to navigate all of the functions in the dark. The number of functions means it’s often necessary to press several buttons to access something, but it’s all quite easy. The buttons are a bit clunky, which won’t please everyone but you get used to their feel. My only slight criticism is that it doesn’t have one-touch radio station presets, you have to access a menu of your preset stations.
- The reception on both FM and DAB is up to Pure’s usual high standard.
- The Pure Siesta remembers all your settings and favourite stations if you unplug it or have a power cut.
There’s not much to dislike. My only criticism, as mentioned by other reviewers, is that you can’t set the radio station you wake up to (you can only set DAB or FM and it uses the last station that you tuned to). As others have also mentioned you can overcome this by waking up to FM and leaving the FM station set to the one you want to wake up to. Then just use the DAB side for normal radio listening.
I think this is an excellent device – I’m glad I waited for this model before buying one. I downloaded the user manual from Pure’s website before buying it – that way you can find out exactly how each feature works before deciding if it’s right for you.
I give it a solid recommendation.
Rating: 4 / 5
I recently bought one of these and want to point out that when the other reviewers said the display is dim, you need to know that it is REALLY dim, especially at night when it’s almost impossible to read. Additionally, the size of the numbers is very small, and if you are like me and don’t wear your glasses in bed, it will be very hard to read the display with this particular model.
The sound quality of the radio is decent enough, and it’s nice being able to set an alarm that only goes off on weekdays.
However the display is a major drawback, and I could not recommend this product to anyone else.
Rating: 2 / 5
I was fedup when my favourite DJ on 6music was relegated to the grave-yard shift so decided I needed a DAB for the bedroom. I’d already got a Pure DAB in kitchen so know that quaity is good.
1st impression was, “It’s so small!” [the Siesta was replacing a Multi-band Communications Receiver.] “it’s gonna sound tinny”
Needn’t have worried, sound is fab from such a little box.
Display is exactly right, I use reading glasses but this is easy to read at night without. Auto-dimming works fine.
3 alarm modes, weekdays[mon-fri],weekends and every day.
Time setting is automatic, from DAB.
The sleep setting is a doddle too, from 15 to 90mins in 15 minute sections.
Here’s a clever trick though, if I go to sleep with Gideon Coe on DAB I wake up to Radio4 Today prog! You can asign either DAB or FM on the alarm so you don’t have to wake up with same station.
All in all, a great little radio. I love it!
Update. nearly a year on and she’s still performing beautifully. Get one for Xmas! And no, I don’t work for pure, lol.
Rating: 5 / 5
I have just purchased this Clock/Radio, and am very pleased with it!
The Siesta looks good and while, yes it’s plastic – the build quality seems to be reasonable. Having seen both on display, I prefer the Black/Silver to the White model (but this is really just down to your own taste).
The display is clear, although I agree with the earlier comment, that the clock is a bit small to be seen from a distance. I like the “auto-dimming” feature, but it would be nice if there was the option to turn this on/off.
The Radio Tuner (both DAB & FM) is very good, and the signal strength is excellent or better when compared to other radios I have in the house. I was quickly able to scan and store presets for all of my favourite stations.
Setting the alarms was relatively straightforward. Especially when you bear in mind that this radio has 3 separate alarms, which can all take different settings… it was never going to be a 1-touch operation! But, once programmed modifying them to alter the time or volume is very easy.
A great radio, and compared to similar products, a good price.
Rating: 4 / 5