The XFM DAB radio is a collaboration between London's XFM radio station and iTech who produce DAB and other audio technology and this unit really majors on style with it’s ice white case and big branded black speakers. Measuring 383mm x 124mm x 125mm its quite a big beast of a DAB unit and it produces a deep bass sound to match it’s butch appearance, in fact the bass rather dominates the audio quality of the iTech's sound and may not be to your tastes if you are a classical music fan.

Operating the lozenge shaped XFM Dab is a simple task, configuration takes less time than it does to get the unit out of it's packaging, a scan of the radio spectrum results in all the available DAB stations stored in alphabetical order for you to select from, 5 of these may be stored on the preset buttons. The large LCD screen gives access to all the usual DAB extras like scrolling text giving tracks names and even news stories and football scores.

The DAB reception of the XFM radio is very good and crisp without the hiss of FM, there is also an FM tuner should you find yourself in one of the decreasing number of DAB black spots in the UK. A really nice feature is the ability to record 10 minutes of radio, allowing you to pause and in effect rewind live radio a kind of Sky+ system on DAB. The recordings are made in MP3 which means that the DAB radio will also playback MP3 files from an in built SD / MMC card slot, so in theory you could buy a 1gb SD card and get an Ipod style, Ipod function DAB radio.

The marketing hype also points out that the XFM Dab radio doubles up as an alarm clock and you can be woken to the sound of DAB radio, of course you may need to find a bigger bedside cabinet to sit the unit on and it could cause alarm to clap eyes on the XFM dab's imposing front first thing in the morning.

Finally we get to power, a unit this big takes some powering, the mains adaptor isn't small so I guess that should have been some sort of warning to us, but nothing quite prepared us for the 5 D cell batteries needed to make the XFM mobile. The last gadget we had in the office that took 5 D Cells was the huge range topping maglite and like the monster torch the 5 batteries at a whopping 700grams to the weight of the unit making it 1.7kg fully loaded.

It would be a shame to ruin the shapely white exterior with an environmental warning sticker but you should be aware just how many batteries it will eat if you do use it on the move, plus have a physiotherapist on standby if you carry it for any real distance!

Priced at £130 the XFM Dab Radio is a cool piece of kit very much in keeping with the Ipod tech style that is so popular, it sounds good (although a bit heavy in the bass department) and when attached to the mains is a very good DAB unit.

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