The 110 x 44 x 160mm unit tops the scales at a weighty 1.3kg and while its a wireless device you are unlikely to carry it around the home, which is just as well. Styled in the expected gadget silver and with the all too common blue LCD screen it's nothing surprising too look at but still it is a step up from the rather basic Netgear MP101 we tested 12 months ago.

Getting the unit set-up for our test showed that nothing is ever too simple, the first surprise was that the SLA5520 has only a 3.5mm audio output jack, we were expecting a pair of RCA connectors on the rear and so we had to find a suitable lead to provide the RCA's for our amplifier. With the audio output connected it was time to get it onto our office wireless network.

The Philips SLA5520 will work with 802.11b/g networks and can cope with WPA and WEP 64 and 128bit encryption although as always we found it easier to disable the security before getting the Streamium unit connected for the first time. The user interface was quiet good and easy enough to search for the wireless SSID and then get connected, then re apply the network security.

That's only half of the story, you then need to load the Philips media server software known as "Philips media manager" this should server up your music collection after first cataloguing it on the PC that hosts your files. To say its clunky and slow would be an understatement, the catalogue of our media took all night (we just left it running) and don't get any ideas of using its interface it takes ages compared to Windows media 10 and iTunes. Plus its a hungry little chap eating memory like it hasn't seen some RAM in weeks, we regularly found it running with 140mb in use.

Still it does server up the tracks to the SLA5520 and that's its main job, Philips do say that the Streamium device will also work with any UPnP server like Twonky, we had a brief try with Slim Server 6.2 with mixed results. However with media now on tap it was time to try out the SLA 5520 itself.

The user interface is simple yet readable, the backlight makes reading easy even in strong natural light and the main method of control is via the supplied remote control. The tracks are presented by navigating through a hierarchy of Artists, Album, genre or just searching though the tracks, you can access play lists created on the server software although we had quite a fight making them in the first place.

Playback of MP3, WAV and WMA (including WM10 DRM wrapped) are supported by the Philips, all seemed to play smoothly without any hint of disturbance due to networking issues, the audio output is also relatively free of electronic noise or other unwanted sounds. We did experience the occasional dropping of the network connection by the SLA5520 although this was quickly fixed by a reboot or by re searching for the network, in the week of testing this occurred 3 times.

Internet radio is another big feature of the Philips Streamium range and the SLA-5520 comes equipped for playback of any internet accessible station, we tested with both BBC and commercial UK stations with good results. The unit supports both WMA and MP3 streaming stations although we found a few WMA ones that just wouldn't play ball, Real streams are off limit but they are few and far between in the UK. We also managed to connect to a number of US stations and others around the world, making the unit ideal for ex pats who want to get radio from home.

There are no other little extras to speak off so no RSS news feeds or walled gardens of special content but for under £100 what did you expect. As a streaming media device the SLA5520 really does do the job well and the whole user experience is one notch up on the older Netgear MP101 for around the same price. It's not Squeezebox but then that is the rolls Royce compared to this Mondeo of MP3 streaming units.

If you are looking for a reliable streaming solution with a good user interface then Philips seem to have the answer, your only problem will be finding a good UPnP to replace the supplied software which could really hamper the performance of any PC onto which it is loaded.

Published - 22/04/2006

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