The first fruit of this switch is the MPIO PD100 DAB radio, the 84 x 61 x 20mm unit weighs 106 grams and is comparable with a mobile phone for approximate size and shape. The front of the PD100 is dominated by a large 8 line LCD display which while only greyscale looks pretty cool with the obligatory blue LED backlight. Overall its a very portable device and doesn't feel that badly built but it's nowhere near as solidly built as the Sony DAB radio we tested last year.

Fire up the PD100 and the menu system gives you a few options on which purpose you want to use the unit for, there is MP3 playback, recording and FM radio but we started with DAB which is after all the MPIO's main use. The first scan takes a few minutes but soon we had a full range of DAB stations listed by name on the display, selecting a BBC station produced a good signal strength although we had to have the earphones plugged in as they seem to be used as the antenna. The sound on BBC Radio One was clean and hiss free but is not that warm, for some reason we had expected the warmth often found in the Pure DAB products to be the standard sound, however the MPIO DAB unit is a more top end sound. That's not to say there is no bass, it is there but not in the kind of amount that we'd prefer, it leaves the bassy pop music of Radio one sound a little lacklustre.

We switched to Virgin Radio to see if it was related just to one station but again the sound was a little bright and hollow in places which is a real shame as the actual use of the MPIO unit is simple and comfortable. The menu system is easy enough that we didn't resort to the manual at any point and you can store stations (both DAB and FM) as favourites plus you get all the DAB extras like scrolling text and even news on some channels. The rocker control on the side of the unit is the primary method of moving between menus and it soon becomes second nature.

The inbuilt MP3 player is a nice extra and is better implemented than the one on the large Pure DAB2000 unit, it's simple to use with listings of tracks transferred to the device via the USB 1.1 connection which can be a bit slow to load. Our review unit only had 128mb of storage which is pretty poor, although according to MPIO you can get up to 512mb of internal disk, sadly there is no option to add an external memory card. File playback is limited to just MP3 and WMA (up to 192kbps).

The PD100 can also encode to MP3 from the FM radio and to a bit rate restricted format for recording from DAB, we can only guess that the innards of the PD100 can't muster enough grunt to encode MP3 while decoding DAB signals. You can also encode from an inbuilt microphone and via a line input in the base of the unit.

battery life is a somewhat interesting area with the MPIO PD100, they claim some rather impressive figures for MP3 playback (43 hours) and yet only get 9 hours DAB reception from a charge. We set about testing these and quickly confirmed the 9 hour DAB life was about right, it does seem that DAB decoding is a power hungry process as we have seen with other units. However the MP3 playback died at a round 14 hours not the claimed 43 hours! we managed to get a bit more by switching off the backlight and not changing any settings or tracks during replay but still its a massive difference from the claimed life.

Overall the MPIO fares well against its main rivals the Sony portable DAB and Pure DAB2000, its much smaller than both and far more portable, it can encode MP3 and playback (which the Sony can't do) and it seems to hold onto signals better than the Pure Digital. Its audio quality is not the best and this is what stops us giving it a whole hearted recommendation, but prices at just over £80 it's good value.

Published - 04/03/2006

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