Tangent Quattro

This bright-red radio may look a bit like it was made by Ferrari in the Fifties but don’t worry too much if it’s not to your taste – more conservative white, black and walnut versions are also available, and the latter two are even £20 cheaper.

The styling of the unit is great, though, with two large knobs on the front for volume and menu selection. The buttons are standard Reciva (see panel, right) though and suffer from the usual complaint – they aren’t labelled particularly well.

Sound quality is very high and the speaker is mounted on the top of the device so it doesn’t impact on the facia. Perhaps rather strangely, the device also offers a bog-standard FM radio. There’s nothing special about this, but you can program stations into the presets, just as you can with the internet version.

Being the newest Reciva model in the test, it has the most up-to-date software. It adds a new Podcasts option to the menu, as well as the usual Reciva list of over 11,000 radio stations, the Listen Again services from the BBC and the ability to stream music simply from your PC. Podcasts are limited to those available from the BBC and BlogTalkRadio (www.blogtalkradio.com).

You can choose Wi-Fi or use the wired Ethernet socket if you’d prefer, and there are sockets for line out, headphones and an auxiliary connection. But it’s the marriage of sound quality and superb radio features that wins this our Gold Award.

See our video review:


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