Home > Consumer Reviews > Roberts Stream202 WM202BK DAB/FM/WIFI Internet Radio - Black

A little pricey but this gives access to all current forms of radio. It you cant get a station on this black beauty then it doesnt exist!
You have trusty FM, quality DAB and the vast internet radio.
Most radio stations from around the world stream on the internet now so this gives you access to thousands! Even the stations that stream at a low bit rate sound magnificent on this Roberts.
The sound quality is what matters for me which is why I bought this. It doesn't disappoint.
The unit is a little smaller than it looks in photos but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Its small and light.
Although it has various alarms built in, I wouldn't use it as a clock radio as the display is bright and blue and not great if you like a dark room. It's best for the kitchen or study.
Ive got a few internet radios and this is the best. Most internet radios take an age to start up with buffering etc. the Roberts is super fast, i dont know how they do it but it starts playing the selected internet station almost immediately.
This is a true radio and will get you any station you want!

I live in an area where the VHF signal is variable and we have no DAB signals at all. Two local friends had already bought internet radios and I realised this would solve my problem, listening a lot to Radio 3 where it is essential to have good quality sound. But what is a magnificent bonus is to have access to international stations, I happen to be a jazz fan and I found two NY stations which play 24 hr jazz of high quality. The only snag is occasional breaks in transmission and a short time in loading the station, I went for the Roberts radio and its quality is very good indeed.

I bought this as a Xmas present for my husband. I had great difficulty hooking it up to the internet, but that's probably due to my lack of computer savviness than any fault with the product. We love this radio and it is used at length daily. Excellent sound quality, easy to use and looks nice. I wish it had some more space for preset stations (about twice what it has at present would be good). Other than that - no complaints!

You will be reading all of the reviews you can find for this machine so I won't bore you by saying what it can do. Let me concentrate on how well it does its thing as far as I'm concerned.

First impressions
A bit lightweight but adding the 6 D batteries for mobility soon cures this!
Build quality ok if a little plasticy. Won't win many style awards.
Some of the buttons seem a bit small and fiddly.
Initial set up ok to follow in manual and I soon got sound out of it.

FM Radio
Reception is very poor in my area but it picks up the 2 local stations well and the sound is good. Even better when boosted through my usual sound system. Simple to set presets on the 5 buttons available. Obviously didn't need that many for FM.

DAB Radio
I'll tell you in a few years time when it reaches us.

Internet Radio
Again, relatively easy to set up following the manual. I have a Mac G4 and use a third party router with a password set but it all flowed through ok. Logging on to the central radio website was easy and with some 15000+ stations etc there should be something for everyone available. If not, then you can add your favourite URLs to your personalised pages.

The 5 preset buttons doesn't seem enough here but the menu system is easily accessed to get to your favourites set up via the website.

Not the easiest of menu systems to work through though and the buttons are a little fiddly in practise but it all works ok and the sound is good.

Streaming
The fly in the ointment!
The manual does concede that there are computers out there that are not PCs but isn't too helpful regarding streaming set up for Mac users. An email to Roberts did produce a prompt and helpful pointer towards some useful documentation though.
There are two methods of streaming. Sharing and UpnP.
I couldn't get Sharing to work. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the many bits of different kit involved but the radio didn't want to find any MP3 files in my folders. Life is too short to spend days lost in technospeak so I gave up and moved on to method two.
I needed to download a UpnP program (I used EyeConnect) but once this was in place I did achieve some degree of success although it couldn't access all of my Playlists in iTunes and once it reported a "Network error" it wouldn't then work with previously successful finds until switched off and restarted.
So, a partial success but it could and should be a whole lot easier if this is ever intended to be a mass market product.

Sundry Alarms etc
I didn't buy it as an alarm clock and the screen is too bright to use in a bedroom unless you are scared of the dark. Haven't bothered to find out if they all work but I'm guessing that they will be simple to use.

Conclusion
When it works it works well but it is not perfect and needs some patience to get everything up and running. I bought it to access internet radio and to have portability and it does what I want it to do so I am relatively happy.
Would love to give it more stars but the Streaming experience lets it down for me.

...best portable radio I've ever had, I now listen to radio stations from all around the world with ease. The WiFi internet radio is amazing, very easy to use. Radio arrived within days in perfect condition and took me about 5 minutes to set-up the WiFi... after that the radio can automatically search and store radio stations, it will list stations by music type and country. The FM and DAB work very well also. Sound is very very good and for a radio for this size outstanding. Yes I would by another if it was half-inched.