Photo gallery: Pure One ClassicDesign
The Pure One Classic is true to its name in that at first glance it looks like a traditional bedside/kitchen radio, with its familiar rectangular shape and size, and its silver telescopic aerial. On closer inspection, however, you take in its modern twists — the nice rubberised soft cladding (we tested a black unit, but it's available in white and pink too), a backlit display screen, and the Centre control dial surrounded by seven smaller self-explanatory function buttons (DAB/FM, Stations, Presets, Volume, Alarm, Menu and ReVu).
On the side there is a 3.5mm headphone socket and a stereo analog line-in port for connecting iPods or MP3 players. There's also a mini USB port for loading software upgrades.
It runs on mains power or six 1.5-volt C-cell batteries. A rechargeable battery pack is available as an optional extra.
The smart, simple design is only marred by the positioning of the on/off switch (it's labelled Standby). The button is somewhat awkwardly positioned down in the lower right corner on the front of the radio. We think that access would be easier if it were on the top or side of the device — as is, it's easy to knock the radio over reaching out to press it.
Features
Pure One Classic receives DAB+ and FM radio signals. When you set up for the first time, its AutoTune feature will scan to find available digital stations. Unless you have some favourite community station that hasn't gone digital, we bet you'll spend most of your time on one of the many new digital services for their clarity and scrolling text info. At any rate, the Pure One Classic can store up to 30 DAB+ or FM presets, so you can have quick access to plenty of listening options.
As mentioned, one of the benefits of going digital is access to scrolling text information — for music channels this means the accompanying song title and artist. For stations that support it, this radio can also display Intellitext messages (optional on-demand data that you can receive in addition to the normal broadcast information). Most commonly this would be footy or cricket scores, weather updates or other news headlines. Very few Australian stations offer Intellitext yet — you'll simply get a No Data message — so it's not much of a beneficial feature as yet.
When you turn the radio on, it may take a few seconds for the text info to appear. On the Pure One Classic, you can pause scrolling text by pressing in the Centre dial. Turning the dial left or right allows to you review the current scrolling message and pressing the Centre dial again resumes the live stream.
There is also a designated ReVu button — more on that under Performance.
There is an on-board alarm, sleep and kitchen timer, so this radio works fine as a bedside clock radio. Its only weakness in this assignment is the clock part; the digital time is displayed on the screen, which is hard to read from a distance. You do have options with the screen backlight — it can be set to on, off or timed to stay on for seven seconds when any button is pressed. Nonetheless, for clock purposes, light or no, the time display is fairly small.
The upside is that the time clock will always be correct, regardless of whether the power supply has been interrupted. Digital radios continuously receive the time as part of the digital information feed, so unlike traditional alarm clocks that reset to midnight or are off by the duration that it was without power, a digital radio has the correct time as soon as the power is restored.
Performance
The sound is good; as good a quality as can be expected from a 1.8W 3-inch speaker. You can make +/- five steps of treble and bass level adjustments to suit your taste, but at the end of the day, this smallish radio isn't meant to fill the room with sound. Volume levels, even at full throttle, are moderate.
The One Classic's ReVu button is the one feature that's new territory for digital radio novices. You press it to pause digital radio, then rotate the Centre dial to rewind and replay the broadcast. The buffer will let you backtrack up to 15 minutes of content, providing you haven't changed the station in that time frame. A small ReVu time display lets you know how far from live time you are.
The ReVu implementation is a little confusing, as turning the Centre dial will skip you back rapidly through the buffer and it's a bit tricky to stop at the exact point you want. You have to press the ReVu button again to stop the rewind scan, and turn the Dial through single clicks to get to the song or segment you want to repeat. When you want to go back to live radio, you need to press and hold the ReVu button again. It probably gets easier with practice, but the ability to replay that catchy new song stuck in your head ad nauseam is fun to exploit.
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