The Genus PR1I really is a designer radio with some serious design muscle, designed by the Genius Consulting group and a company called Alloy the PR1I is a very high quality device with the best materials used for a clean cut contemporary look and feel.

Beyond the undeniable beauty of the Genus PR1I there is also good sound technology, it offers a good DAB implementation with a large LCD screen backlit deep blue and a simple yet effective control panel. DAB reception is first class and hiss free as we have come to expect plus there is access to a fastune system and some 50+ DAB radio stations including many that are DAB only. The PR1I can accommodate some 20 presets top store your favourite stations (10 DAB + 10 FM) for easy recall, plus it has full support of FM so it's well suited for use with non DAB stations and also in areas of less than ideal DAB reception.

The Genus is a full music centre and offers a few extras over standard DAB units, for a start it has a front loading CD player letting you use all your CD collection with the same control system, plus it has an alarm clock with sleep timer making it a good bedside companions.

Perhaps the main DAB extra is the ability to record up to 20 minutes of DAB radio onto internal memory in MP3 format, allowing you to pause live radio and even rewind it to catch something you missed, this facility works very well and we are big fans of the Sky+ like operation.

Audio quality is excellent and as good as the Pure Tempus units that are so widely acknowledged as providing great quality from small units, again this is not a ghetto blaster and its high quality audio is loud but never room filling. If you were to try and party to this DAB unit you'd have egg on your face, but as a unit to listen to Wogan on or to wake up to the sound of BBC 6 Music its spot on.

The Genus PR1I is mains powered but it can also run on batteries but it needs 8 x C size batteries which make it a heavy old lump, so don't get visions of taking it down to the local park on a sunny day unless you have a trolley jack with you.

The unit has a headphone socket and also comes with a small credit card sized remote control just to make it that bit more useful and of course it needs to be to justify the £150 price tag.

Overall this is a high quality DAB radio, you are paying extra for the design of the genus PR1I DAB unit but we think its probably worth it as the package is feature rich and it sounds pretty good.

Published - 02/04/2005

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