Pure Digital Evoke-2S DAB & FM radio

Register Hardware has reviewed Evoke's pricey (£170) DAB offering.

Excerpts follow:

"Everything is laid out simply and labelled clearly, so there's no need to go near the manual to figure out which button does what. All the controls feel solid and precise."

"You can purchase the company’s ChargePAK internal rechargeable battery for true portability, as well as an iPod dock. We can't help feeling that, for the price, the Evoke-2S really should come with these in the box."

"The unit has a good-sized detachable aerial which helps to deliver a quick automatic search on start-up. There's a good level of coverage with full DAB Band III (174–240MHz) and FM reception (87.5–108MHz). The unit is capable of decoding all DAB and DAB+ transmission modes one to four, up to and including 192Kb/s. You can also trim the DAB station list or rearrange it into your preferred order."

"The alarm functions - wake, kitchen and machine sleep timer - are all easy to find and set. The radio provides a generous 50 DAB and 50 FM station presets, and is easy to tune."

"The Evoke-S2 also supports Intellitext, textSCAN, FM RDS and RadioText. Not huge amounts of Intellitext around as yet, but for now the football tables available on TALKSport work well."

"Pure's pitch for this radio centres on its sound quality. The Evoke-S2 has a digital end-to-end audio sub-system which uses an integrated switch-mode power supply, class D amplifiers and custom-tuned speakers together delivering 30W RMS output. The unit boasts two mid-range 7.5cm drive units and two 1.9cm dome tweeters which give the unit genuine range and clarity for its size."

"Pure says the unit can handle lots of bass and there's a bass adjustment mode that's easily accessible from the front panel, so we turned it right up. What is really nice here is that when the bass is turned up, you actually get more bass, not just a vague thumping sound and loss of clarity on the rest of the frequencies, as per so many bass-boosters."
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