Using the Cube

The menu system of the iRadio hasn’t changed much from the previous incarnation, for an LCD display the entries scroll quite nicely over the little screen and titles, tracks and general information is easily recognizable, even from a good distance away.

The navigation buttons on the front, with the most important one in the middle, are easy to use and feel quite responsive, even when browsing to a folder where more than 1000 MP3s are stored, there’s never a laggy feel to the whole, which is good of course.



There are buttons next to screen used for favourites/alarm clock settings and a few other miscellaneous functions, I found them a bit hard to press, most of the time I ended up pushing the cube of the table, without the button clicking to confirm my choice. The round buttons on the larger iRadio are easier to depress. It’s a small detail, but noticeable in usage.

Most of the time though I used the remote control to navigate the menus, there are more options available on the remote and it’s as easy to use as the onboard controls. Infrared control does mean you have to have direct line of sight with the iRadio.



As an alarm clock the iRadio Cube works nicely as long as you don’t mind a little bit of light in the room. The previous sentence is quite important, the LCD screen has two brightness settings, you can set it manually to low/high or have the device go from high -> low after a few minutes of idling. But even at the low setting the LCD lights up a dark room, I’ve seen worse offenders, but it’s noticeable and can be a make or break deal for some.



You can configure your favourite MP3 as an alarm bell, or an internet radio station, or a boring beeping noise. When I read about this functionality I was worried about a scenario where my internet connection would go down and I would miss my train because the alarm did not wake up. Noxon thought of this luckily, in case the device does lose its connection the alarm will default to the standard beeping noise, I tried it, it works, I can now sleep safe and sound.