I have owned the Grace GDI-IR2500 now for a couple of months, and I will try to be as brief as I can with my thoughts and comments.
Build quality: Fair - not terrible, but not great. The black vinyl or plastic wrap used over the wood housing is attractive but not assembled very well, with very noticable imperfections/large wrinkles on both the top front right corner and the top back right corner. The controls are of comperable quality to those of a $10 clock radio, and will probably start wearing out after a couple of years of heavy use. The 4-line LCD display is relatively easy to read.
Setup: If you have ever setup any other wireless devices such as a laptop, smartphone or other wi-fi enabled device, it is not much different and pretty straight forward. The only area that can be somewhat cumbersome is the same issue I have in other areas of operation: the poorly functioning and designed remote control. The remote basically offers up and down keys for entering a security key, scrolling through each number and letter of the alphabet, locating the character you need, then selecting, then scrolling... you get the picture. A remote offering a numeric/ABC type of entry would be preferred, and for $130 to $150, should be included.
Station selection: Good - but not nearly as good as some of the applications offered on iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smartphones such as WunderRadio and RadioTime. Searching for stations is also poorly thoughtout. Other than Clear Channel Communication's "iHeartRadio" offering, you can't even search stations by state, let alone city - and searching by call letters is again an entry where you have to scroll through every letter of the alphabet and enter each character, which is a pain.
Connectivity: No complaints, it starts up relatively quick once you have your wireless settings configured. Regarding connecting to a station url, it depends on the stream format... most .AAC streams begin playing quickly, .mp3 streams fairly quick, .WMA streams a few seconds longer, but none are frustratingly slow. It also played all streams consistantly for hours at a time without interruption.
Sound quality: Fair at best. I guess for $150 I expected this radio to sound at least as good as some of the $50 Sony or Panasonic tabletop radios from the past. There is no reason it couldn't on most mid-to-higher kbps streams - but Grace chose to cut costs on one of the most important aspects of any radio - the speaker - and the speaker quality is about on par with that of a $20 GE table radio. That would be OK if the radio cost $50, but for what these relatively cheap to build radios cost the consumer, I expect the materials and components used to be of higher quality.
Remote Control: Poor quality, poor layout, and many times you have to hit keys two or three times to get a response. I thought the included battery might have been old, but the Duracell replacement battery I bought did not improve the remote's performance.
The bottom line: If you want an internet radio that somewhat gives you the look and feel of your old tabletop radio, and you use the presets a good part of the time, it's an OK radio. I don't hate it, and have actually had some fun with it, but in reality it is worth about $79 tops. I would however look at the Logitech Squeezebox before this or any other internet radio. I played with one at Best Buy a couple weeks back and the build and sound quality is light-years better, and it also offers an optional battery pack.
If the old-time feel of a tabletop radio isn't important and you are wanting to just tune in stations from around the world and have decent sound quality, and if you own an iPhone, Blackberry or Android smartphone with 3G and/or a wi-fi connection, I recommend one of the many decent wireless bluetooth speaker systems (I own the Altec Lansing inMotion SoundBlade Bluetooth A2DP Speaker/Speakerphone, which sounds better than this Grace unit, operates on either the supplied AC power adapter or batteries, and cost me around $50) and install some free to very cheap apps on your smartphone such as Pandora, Slacker, Sirius/XM, iHeartRadio, Yahoo Music, WunderRadio and RadioTime. The beauty of smartphone apps is you can also use them with many new car audio systems (wirelessly via bluetooth or wired via an auxiliary in jack), at the office, at the beach, and pretty much anywhere you have either 3G data or a wi-fi connection.
February 20, 2011 note: I find it interesting that in one day my post went from "27 of 29 people found the following review helpful" to "27 of 37 people found the following review helpful"... yes, in one day, and over 4 months after the review was posted. Seems as though some Grace employees or dealers might not have appreciated my honesty. Grace Digital GDI-IR2500 Wi-Fi Internet radio Featuring Pandora, NPR On-Demand, Sirius and iheartradio
I have the IR2000 for about 18 mos. It is basically unusable now. Talked with customer support and they said to fill out their repair form. Ok--it says to include all of your credit card info, including security code and put in box with the unit(not doing that) and return it for repair $25.. Tried to call them to confirm this and got put in a loop of select sales or technical support. Select either one and it rings for awhile then brings you back to welcome. Cannot understand this, Grace was one of the best. I paid about $150 for this radio about 18 mos. ago and it worked good for awhile and now will not stay connected. I have two other internet radios and they work great. Sent another email about this, now waiting for a reply. Do not purchase a product without support.
I needed a radio that could handle weaker am stations. After some research, I decided to go the Internet radio route. I found some decent reviews on Grace products and decided on the GDI-IR2500.
What I liked:
-simple to setup, not too many options to confuse. -very easy to use, right out of the box. -Most staions I wanted to listen to are already available. -Direct access to may Pandora account is cool.
What I didn't like:
-without a keypad or a way to connect to a computer, entering info is tedious, scroll to a letter, click, scroll to another letter, click,.... -When you push the big nob, the whole radio moves, so you need to either hold it every time or have it against something sot it doesn't slide off the table.
Would like to see:
-a hard ethernet connector would be nice and a way to connect to the device directly over the LAN. -a stonger speaker, while the sound was clear, the max volume was not very high. Yes, I can connect it to speakers but the radio I am replacing this with is over 10 yrs old and has stronger speakers. - Grace - Pandora - Wifi Radio - Sirius Radio'
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