Home > Consumer Reviews > Sanyo R227 WiFi Internet Radio (Black)

The radio was easy to set up and worked perfectly out of the box. There are a limited number of presets, but when you register the radio at RECIVA you may choose additional favorite radio stations and they appear in a "My Stuff" category on the menu. The volume is adequate for a small room and the tone is awesome.

Two complaints: 1) The dial is too bright for use in a bedroom when using the sleep function; 2) the remote control had some buttons that stopped working within a few weeks of delivery.

Unfortunately, Sanyo doesn't stock separate remote controls and you have to send the entire unit back to them for replacement

Just a short while ago, a good-sounding Internet table-size radio would likely carry a price tag near the half-thousand-dollar mark. While there are several models today that can be had for $200 or less, the Sanyo R227 seems to be the only one that gives you good sound in stereo. With a speaker facing from the side at each end, there may be restrictions on where you can place it for maximum effect, but the compact radio has an earphone jack that allow connecting to external speakers. (It also provides inputs for a device such as a CD or MP3 player.) What's most impressive of all, though, is the quality of the sound that this radio delivers. It's well-balanced---neither tubby or tinny. Connecting to Internet stations is simple and relatively quick. The credit-card size remote makes it easy to choose from any of 8 pre-sets that you create. And, for a bonus, this radio also has an FM tuner and dual wake-up alarms. Hook-up using a wireless router brought a more consistent connection than listening to the same Internet stations at a computer served by the same router.

We don't listen to enough radio to warrant a $140+ annual subscription fee, so when it recently came time to renew our satellite radio subscription we decided to give internet radio a try instead. We chose the Sanyo R227 after reading reviews and we're very happy we did. It's not the fanciest internet radio going - it (currently) can't tap into Pandora, it has only 8 available presets (plus 8 FM presets), the menu access and remote control are slightly kludgy, its sound is just good and the manual leaves a bit to be desired - but for our purposes it's perfect.

Out of the box the setup is fairly easy. We have it about 50 feet from our router which it accesses wirelessly, but you can also hardwire it. You'll need to manually enter the security key for your network just once and you're away.

Register the radio at [...] (they make the chipset) and you can create your own folders of favorite stations on the website, as well as add streams and podcasts - all for free. These then show up on the radio menu under "My Stuff". There's also a forum at the website which is far more helpful than the manual for sorting out any problem you might have. You can even request a station to be added to the lineup if Reciva doesn't already have it, although this is subject to the format of its online stream. Reciva has literally thousands of internet radio stations to choose from and growing every day.

The R227 can also access sound files on your computer through Windows Shares and it has a connector on the back for your CD player, etc.

Now the niggles. It's a bit fiddly to maneuver through the radio's menu using the buttons on the front, especially when trying to select from the many lists of available radio stations. (This is where the Reciva.com website comes in most handy.) The remote buttons could have been thought out better. The quality of sound from the built-in speakers is sufficient but won't make audiophiles happy; it does have a connector for external speakers but if your speakers are passive, not powered, you'll need to add a small amp to get them working. It could also use more than 8 presets.

But considering this technology is still in its infancy, the Sanyo R227 is a great little radio and we enjoy it every day.

I bought the Sanyo 227 radio and the set-up connecting to Wi-Fi was painless. However, my motivation for buying the radio was to receive WQXR-FM, the only classical music radio station in the New York area. (WQXR recently was sold and given a new frequency at half the output - no longer available to us in the outlying areas). I downloaded 25+ radio stations using the Reciva web site (a truly awesome worldwide selection), and the only station that would not play was WQXR! The radio gives a message of "Retrying...retrying..retrying". Very frustrating.
There is no such thing as Reciva Support (no one you can call, no one you can e-mail), but there is a Forum with mega listings of complaints about not receiving WQXR in New York. I got several responses recommending electronic patches into the Reciva software, but nothing worked for my system. I should add that I can get WQXR on my desk top PC and on my lap top around the house, but not on the Sanyo 227 radio with WQXR streamed from Reciva.
Bottom line - if you're buying your Sanyo 227 radio for a specific radio station, don't assume it will work. Better to find an internet radio that uses a different music base such as Pandora.

Hello,

I bought this so that my wife could listen to our iTunes library from the kitchen. It was VERY difficult to set up and then she said it was 'just too difficult to navigate' and would not use it. It did do what it said it would, but not easily enough to be convenient. It needs to boot up and scan each time and then finding the specific file (or playlist, podast, etc.) you want can be quite onerous.

It played the internet radio stations quite well though. Those were pretty easy to find because the call letters are unique and numeric.

Oh well. I will have to find something else.

Hope this helps,

Mark