Charge!
In contrast to the Tempest and many other table-top DAB radios, Dualit's offering can run from batteries - and not expensive old-fashioned disposables but, instead, so the company claimed initially, built in NiMH rechargeables.
That turned out to be at odds with the manual we received, which states that the batteries are NiCads, so we opened up the battery compartment on the radio's base where we found a cluster of four NiMH AA cells, together rated at 9.6V/2200mAh. We later checked with Dualit and had confirmed that NiMH will definitely be standard on production models. That's good news, given the way in which NiCads tend to lose their ability to retain a full charge.
We think prospective purchasers of this or any other table-top DAB radio shouldn't under estimate the usefulness of having battery operation. It means you can take the radio out in the garden or even out and about on a picnic. Perhaps more important - and assuming the radio is being used from the mains - if the listener is caught up in a programme but needs to go into another room, it's a simple matter to disconnect the plug-mounted mains adaptor/charger (rather a brute of a thing) and take the radio along, without any further faffing about.
Dualit says battery life is three-to-four hours in DAB mode and that doesn't strike us as fantastic, especially when our experience indicated that four hours is overly optimistic. For FM, the claim is slightly more impressive, seven-to-eight hours, but we didn't check that - well, time was short and DAB has the channels we wanted to listen to and is just so much more convenient!
Lots of DAB models don't offer FM, so why does Dualit include it? Well there are two main reasons we can think of and these are rather compelling. First, there are very many local radio stations that are available on FM but not DAB. Second, even in areas of good DAB reception, it's quite possible to have one or more rooms in a house where reception is dicky and, since DAB is an all-or-nothing digital system, that would otherwise mean get nothing at all on the radio in those rooms.
There is a third reason as well but it's Dualit-specific. That's to ensure that folk who absolutely must have a radio to match their Dualit toasters and kettles but live in dodgy DAB areas won't find they've bought super-smart £200 doorstops.
All controls sit along the top of the radio, apart from the on/off switch. That's located on the back on a small panel also holding the power input (10.5V/1.8A) and four other sockets - aux-in, headphone and speaker out (all 3.5mm), plus optical-digital out. We tested all but the optical socket and had no problems.
The aux-in worked fine with an iPod Shuffle – though the Shuffle's volume needed to be turned up to get an acceptably loud output from of the radio. According to the Dualit's designer commenting in our news-forum thread about the radio's pending launch, the company intends to offer an external speaker to be used with radio to let it operate in stereo mode - though no price has been announced. The manual contains no clues as to what spec of speaker would be suitable, so we just tried the first thing that came to hand.
That happened to be the right-hand box from an old, basic, plastic-bodied stereo speaker PC set – a Teac PowerMax 120/2. This is marked up as having a 3in full-range cone and a 2in tweeter and being rated at 4 Ohms and 2x3WRMS. It doesn't have a 3.5mm mini-jack input, though, just a single phono input, so we connected it to the radio with a 3.5mm-to-twin-phono stereo lead. Using the white phono plug gave no output but the red plug worked fine.
Sound was then clearly in stereo (though not, of course, on the DAB talk-radio stations that are broadcast mono) but the quality through the external speaker wasn't quite up to the same standard of the radio's own speaker system – lacking a little bass and also sounding slightly tinny, because of the Teak speaker's shortcomings, we think.
The headphone output sounded just fine and was best when paired with a decent set of headphones (we used our tried and trusted Sennheissers). Like most makers of table-top DAB radios, Dualit doesn't include any headphones or earphones with the product. We didn't have a suitable amp to test the S/PDIF digital optical output so can do little more than report that the manual states that this works only from DAB radio.
The top of the radio has push buttons for standby, auto tuning, setup, DAB/FM/aux-in selection, backlight brightness, DAB-display mode and a further five for station presets that work in DAB and FM modes.
The dominant controls, though, are two large rotary knobs separated by a white-on-blue LCD panel. The knob at the left is for volume and nothing else. The one at the right - although marked as TUNE - is multi-function, acting as a menu wheel for a considerable number of operations.
There are three available LCD brightness levels (on, bright, off) and changes to the LCD's lighting - made by pressing the BACKLIGHT button repeatedly - are supposed to be reflected in the blue power-on LED at top right of the radio's front panel, at least according to the manual, but that didn't change in brightness on our pre-production sample.
Dualit makes a big point of claiming that all controls are intuitive to use, so as to simplify tasks such as tuning, searching for stations, changing clock menus and setting up pre-sets. Leslie Gort-Barten's take is that the company has, "purposefully kept the design and functionality straightforward".
Our take, as we'll detail on the next page, is that some things are far easier to do than others. But that seems to us inevitable given the large number of operations that the TUNE knob controls and the fact that the LCD panel only shows the current selection, not all (or even a range) of the choices available in any particular menu level. So, it's necessary to cycle through them by turning the TUNE knob, keeping an eye on the display until the one you want appears and then pressing the TUNE knob to make that selection.
Ease of use of the controls is further compromised by the handle in a surprisingly silly way and, in our view, requires a speedy redesign if the production model is the same. On the radio we were sent, the handle only swivels backwards - moving 90 degrees from the upright - and, when it's upright, prevents easy access to the TUNE knob.
The aerial is located behind and to the right of the TUNE knob and, when fully extended, stops the handle from travelling more than a few millimeters - not far enough to let you get at the TUNE knob comfortably. And, it's likely that the aerial will be extended any time the user wants to make changes to radio settings that do involve using the TUNE knob. When that situation arises, it's necessary to push the telescopic aerial almost completely back into itself to allow the handle to be moved far enough backwards to be out of the way. After doing that, the aerial will then have to be extend again before making those changes.
We're sure the designer had good reasons for having the handle only hinge backwards but, whatever they were, life would be easier for the user if the handle could also swivel forwards to give immediate access to the TUNE knob while the aerial is fully extended.
