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It is 21x14x9cm looking very like the early DAB offerings, it has a maple wood finish to the sides. However the insides hide a wealth of new technology.

The now standard rod antenna, eight pieces extents 70cm and gives good reception over the whole range of stations. I found the auto tuning quick and efficient on first switch on. This is a mains only unit and by default it will arrange all stations alphabetically. 

I get a good signal in my area and found 51 stations and during my test tried them all briefly although a lot of the content was not exactly to my taste. The beauty of this unit is that it looks like a normal radio. Two round knobs dominate the display area, the one on the left is for volume and the one on the right changes station a small movement moves easily to the next. It’s name is read out as you change. There is a two line LCD display above these knobs that shows station name and time and date by default. One of the eleven buttons below enable you to have a choice of information displayed. Another the menu is used in conjunction with the station tuner to set or change a whole raft of things such as Alarms making this an ideal bedroom unit. Another of the buttons is a sleep button. There are also 10 presets for your favourite stations, 5 direct from one button and a further five from two buttons.

See also: DAB Radios

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The snooze handle is one of the innovations with the time being read out when touched even when the unit is on standby, great for the middle of the night when you have to decide if there is five minutes or five hours before the alarm goes off.

It is not all good news and I will deal with the problems here, by default the unit has only a single speaker, however the rear does have stereo output and should you wish Pure will sell you a matching second speaker. As this is a mains only unit I would have preferred a normal mains plug rather than the detachable adapter and mains brick.

The rear has outputs for the auxiliary speaker, headphones, stereo output, digital output and a USB input the latter is to allow you to update firmware to keep the unit up to date.

Not everyone gets up at the same time everyday so there are firstly two alarm settings for time as well as the day setting can be selected for daily, weekday, weekend and also Saturday or Sunday. Should you select to be woken by radio you can select what station wakes you up, you may well like a different station when you wake to, than that you drift off to sleep with. Should you fancy a few more minutes peace press the snooze handle and you get another 8 minutes (changeable) of silence.

The likely price is close to £120, not that cheap but full of innovation.

Link to check reception enter your postcode at www.ukdigitalradio.com

Link for the Sonus-1^XT www.pure.com/Products/Product.asp?Product=VL-60751