Home > Consumer Reviews > Roberts DAB/FM RDS digital kitchen radio

Hats off to Roberts, they have created a really good radio here. The sound is good; it has (for the DAB only) a pause-whilst-the-phone-rings feature; all the controls are touch-sensitive so it is damp-finger proof, essential in a kitchen; plays MP3s from an SD card; very easy to fit. Turn it on and it just works.

There are one or two things I find irritating;
* The display shows the time (and date) when the radio is turned off - but when the radio is on it shows the tuned station and other programme information but you can't make it show the time (perhaps I have missed this in the menus but I don't think you can).
* It plays MP3 files but for some reason they have to be in a directory called RADIO on the SD card. It would be much nicer if you could choose any folder then you could have your favourite tracks for, say, WASHING UP or COOKING. You get the idea.
* You can't ask it to have the display back-light on when the radio is off - so you can't read the time unless the lights are on.

These are small things but the reason it gets four stars instead of five; perhaps the MK2? It is generally great and the SD card is a much better idea than similar products that play CDs - CDs are not for the kitchen and cooks with wet or sticky hands.

Firstly very swift delivery, arrived the day after ordered. The unit itself is lovely and does exactly what you want it to do, it fits under a kitchen cupboard and still has great sound from DAB, FM and the SD card.
The one area that Roberts could have assisted better -particularly considering their likely customer demographic - is how to get the music onto the SD card in a playable format. Music is stored on my PC as WMA but needs to be on mp2 or mp3 format. Its a simple enough procedure once you know how. Type something like music conversion software into google and you will have the choice of a bunch of free conversion programmes which you choose one of, then download it, then convert your chosen music files. Your SD card needs to be formatted in the RDK-2 and the converted music files need to be saved in the RADIO folder.
Hope this helps.

1. As has been said by others the SD card is a great idea BUT all your files have to be in one folder called RADIO. The display says something like "VARTRA01.MP3" i.e. the old 8.3 DOS file names you can't change (or at least I only know how to change the long filenames on the PC). You can only scroll (slowly) through each track one by one. There is no way to skip to the next album. I phoned Roberts and confirmed these points are correct. Also when you switch off and on again later, it starts playing from the first track on the SD, not where you left off. Fine if you always want to listen to the same tracks in the same order!

2. The DAB stations take 3-4 seconds to tune in each time, even though each is on a preset and we have almost perfect DAB reception according to the radio itself.

3. The buttons don't always respond and you have to press them again to get a response. The buttons are wipe clean flat surface - good idea for the kitchen but in practice they don't always respond. To be fair, when I phoned Roberts they said it sounded like mine might be faulty.

4. The way it fixes under the cupboard is a good idea as you can adjust to fit flush so there are no gaps for dirt to build up in. However it slightly rocks when you press the buttons due to the way the fixing is designed. An easy fix though would be to glue it in position to stop the slight rocking.

We have returned the product as it was too annoying to put up with.

Whenever the unit was plugged in there was a loud buzzing through the speaker, so loud that you can hear it through spoken channels like Radio 4. Clearly a very cheap transformer has been used. Very disappointed and am sending it straight back.