Pure Digital Siesta

== Pure Digital Siesta: What is it? ==

This is a digital radio alarm clock that can receive both DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) radio and FM radio stations. It's quite neat and comes in three different colours, black, charcoal and silver. When you first switch on the unit it goes through an automatic setup routine and tunes in all the DAB radios stations it can find. This autotune can also be run at any time again through one of the ...
...As with most of the Pure products I've looked at, style is something that they take a lot of time and effort over, and I have to say that I like the look of the Siesta. It's a very neat little unit measuring 17cm wide, 14.5cm deep, and 6.2cm high. The shape is a type of half oval, with the display in the centre of the front face, and all the control buttons on the top near the front. The front face screen is gloss black in all the models, with the ... more

Pure Digital Siesta: What is it?

This is a digital radio alarm clock that can receive both DAB (Digital Audio Broadcast) radio and FM radio stations. It's quite neat and comes in three different colours, black, charcoal and silver. When you first switch on the unit it goes through an automatic setup routine and tunes in all the DAB radios stations it can find. This autotune can also be run at any time again through one of the menu options.

The Look

As with most of the Pure products I've looked at, style is something that they take a lot of time and effort over, and I have to say that I like the look of the Siesta. It's a very neat little unit measuring 17cm wide, 14.5cm deep, and 6.2cm high. The shape is a type of half oval, with the display in the centre of the front face, and all the control buttons on the top near the front. The front face screen is gloss black in all the models, with the rest of the housing being the model colour.

Controls

There are 12 buttons on the top of the unit, in two rows. The 'top' row from left to right has the following:

• Sleep - Sets the sleep timer, pressing this allows you to set the radio to switch off after a pre-determined time. Pressing the button repeatedly lets you set the time to stay on between 15 and 90 minutes.
• Alarm - This button puts you into the alarm programming menu. The clock can store three independent alarms, each with its own settings.
• [-], Select, [+] - These three buttons are used to scroll through menus left and right (using [-] and [+]), and select the option you want.
• Presets - The Presets button allows you to set up to eight 'preset' channels for both the DAB and the FM receivers. Whilst this is more useful for the old FM tuner, on DAB it's not as useful, as stations are selected via a menu anyway. It may be useful as a quick list of favourites though.
• Menu - This takes you in to the setup menu to select various standard options, including the energy saving mode, the upgrade and clock setting menus.

The next row contains another 5 buttons:

• Standby - This puts the radio on and off if you just want to listen to it, and can be used to cancel an alarm that is sounding. When in standby mode, only the clock and the alarm indicators are shown on the display.
• DAB/FM - Switches the radio between digital (DAB) and FM reception
• Snooze - This extra large button allows you to switch the alarm off for 9 minutes, before it switches on again, giving you that little extra time in bed.
• Volume [-] [+] - The next two are the volume buttons that allow you to increase or decrease the volume.

Connections

The unit has an input socket in a recess on the base, for the power (5.5v DC), which is the standard plug in brick, although the supplied power supply is surprisingly small and light. It's also here that there is the USB connector, which allows you to upgrade the unit with new firmware as it's released if you have a PC which you can connect the unit to. The aerial is connected underneath as well, and is the single wire type which just hangs down at the back, and is not removable. There is also a 3.5mm stereo headphone output on the top near the back.

Display

The display is an LCD type, which is backlit continually with a blue-white light. It's the type that has illuminated numbers and black background (rather than the other way round), which look quite neat. One issue I've found with the display though is the viewing angle which is really fairly narrow. From the front, there is a left-right viewable angle of about 110°, and up-down is about 90°, which means if you're stood up and close to the clock on a table, you can't read the display. The other noticeable thing is that the update of the display is quite slow, so when programme information is scrolling there is a noticeable lag in the redrawing of the text. None of this is a real problem (or even unusual for LCD displays), but it is noticeable.

The display has two 16 character text lines, one which usually displays the DAB radio station name (when the radio is on), and the second which can display either the programme information or a variety of other things such as date, programme type, bit rate etc. Usually when a song is playing the text shows the title of the track and the artist, but this is dependent on the broadcaster. The unit can also display station information etc in FM mode, as it is RDS (Radio Data System) enabled.

The clock is the usual 4 digit 24/12 hour (settable), and it automatically updates itself from the radio although it can be set manually if required. It sits above the two text lines in the centre, and the digits are the same height as two of the text lines.

To the left of the time, there is a volume level icon which shows the current volume as a bar graph, and three numbered bell icons which show when an alarm is programmed and set. There is also a small clock icon which is lit when the sleep timer is active.

To the right of the time, there is another bar graph showing the signal strength, a 'zzZ' shows when the alarm is snoozed and an indicator to show whether the unit is in DAB or FM mode.

Another nice feature is that the display has an auto adjusting backlight using a sensor on the front panel under the Pure logo. This adjusts the display brightness to match the conditions of the ambient light, so during the day it's much brighter, then at night it dims right down.

Alarms

You can set up to three independent alarms and for each one there are the following options:

• Set Alarm - Either On or Off
• Set Time - Allows you to set the time of the alarm, setting the hours and minutes separately.
• Set Days - This is a neat feature which allows you to set the days the alarm is set for: daily, weekday, weekend, Saturday, Sunday or once only.
• Set Mode - Choose from DAB, FM or Tone
• Set Volume - Another nice feature allows you to set the alarm volumes as part of the alarm itself.

The one feature which is missing is the ability to set the station you want to be played when the alarm sounds - instead the unit simply plays the last tuned radio station - small omission, but it would have been nice.

Other Features

The unit is capable of displaying 'Intellitext' from providers that send this data, it has snippets of news, sport etc. Personally I have little use for this but some people may find it useful. You do have to navigate a couple of menu's to get to the text though.

As mentioned, the unit has a USB port for firmware upgrades and this is really important as it gives this unit the ability to be upgraded to receive DAB+ transmissions in the near future. DAB+ gives better quality audio than DAB, and will start being broadcast real soon - most current DAB radios are not compatible with DAB+, and this is one of the first radios from Pure that has DAB+ upgradeability, so should enable the unit to stay current for some years to come.

As far as the radio spec goes, it is full Band III, L-Band and FM reception. ETS 300 401 compliant and capable of decoding all DAB transmission modes 1-4 up to and including 256kbps, with future upgrade supported for DAB+

The FM stereo mode can be selected in one of the menus, and the clock can be manually set if required through another menu. There are also options for full, half or no DRC (Dynamic Range Control), which makes quieter sounds easier to hear in noisy or low volume situations.

Sound Quality

Let's not get too carried away with what type of sound this unit can produce - it's a clock radio after all. The sound is mono from the single 2.75" full-range speaker (although there is a stereo headphone socket), with a 1.7W RMS amplifier and active speaker equalisation filter.

The sound is clear, and stays stable up to the maximum volume, although it's not exactly going to bother the neighbours too much. There isn't any noticeable background hum or anything, and both the DAB and FM reception seems equally good (especially where we are as we get good reception). Overall what you'd expect really, and no real niggles at all.

EcoPlus

Pure are also marketing their newer models with the EcoPlus branding which means the products are designed to minimise their environmental impact. It has a very low power consumption (less than 1W in standby and an average of 2W when in use). They also use materials from sustainable and recycled sources, minimise packaging, and select components that have a minimal environmental impact. So for example, instead of polystrene packaging, the inner packing is moulded cardboard, which can be recycled.

Overall Opinion

I like this clock radio a lot, it's nice neat and has good features. The ability to upgrade to DAB+ is an important consideration just now, and few other digital radios on the market can do it at the time of writing this review. The low power consumption and green credentials are also an important factor in purchasing for me, so it scores points there. The only reason I don't give it an excellent, is the display viewing angle, which is restrictive, and although not a big problem is noticeable (particularly as my previous clock was a red LED type, which could be seen anywhere). It's also pretty expensive really at between £40-£50.

Overall though a nice, well put together clock radio with a lot going for it. 

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