The UESmart Radio looks sturdy and well constructed, however it looks as if the product was rushed for the Holiday Season without the proper testing. I have four routers and a hotspot wireless to cover my entire house and patio. It works fine and as expected in two networks out of five, no issues with buffalo and amped routers. It connects to my linksys network fine, but does not stream music from radio or library. On the Asus network it is a 50% deal and on the hotspot it does not even sees the network. I don't have a clue as to why it does not work in certain network environments, specially when all other wireless equipment work fine. The UESmartRadio has a self diagnose, and when it connects to my networks it shows all is fine, except that sometimes it streams music as specified above. As another reviewer reported, the battery indicator shows the battery is charging, but when unplugged the battery meter shows half charge to empty. I will try to run the battery down and charge overnight to see if this corrects the problem and see if it is either a software or battery issue. Happy when it works....extremely unhappy when it doesn't. DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT YET....I am sure Logitech will work it out but it is still full of bugs....Posted complaint to customer support, 3 days and no answer yet from them... DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT YET.......IT MAY OR IT MAY NOT WORK IN YOUR HOME..... Revised 10 hours later...... Definitely a software problem with the battery meter...still showing 1/4 batt remaining and has been playing music for over 10 hours at a reasonable volume..... UPDATE December 3rd, 2012 Changed my review to 4 stars as the UESmartRadio is performing flawlessly now. I disconnected the battery for a couple of hours and re configured my ASUS router to factory settings in order to discard any network issues. The battery meter now shows when it is completely charged and music is streaming as intended on all networks except my hotspot. The sound is better than average and signal range is also better than average, when I lose network signal from my IPAD, Iphone and Galaxy s2, I can still get music from the SmartRadio. It has a line in and line out (mini stereo jack only) so if connected to other audio sources you can stream music anywhere you want and use it as a bridge. Sound quality connected to a home stereo is fair to good, don't expect hi end sound. Changed to 4 stars since product is now working as expected...I still have no idea what went wrong initially and hope it keeps working from now on.....STILL NO WORD FROM CUSTOMER SUPPORT, THIS REVIEW IS FOR THE PRODUCT AND NOT CUSTOMER SUPPORT, otherwise it would have been zero stars..... UPDATE April 1st, 2013 Changed review to 5 stars...Did a software upgrade and the product is working perfectly now, it will connect to any available internet hotspot. When connected on the audio output to an RCA plug stereo device, the volume has to be all the way up and it is still a little low, maybe a another software upgrade is needed.... Read more
Purchased this after calling Logitech to confirm it had certain features I wanted. Initially, it was easy to set up after it arrived, but it was annoyingly difficult to locate my favorite stations. Then, after discovering it did not, despite what I was told by the Logitech rep, allow me to access certain podcasts and BBC 'on demand' programs that I wanted to listen to, I returned it. It was a replacement for a Sanyo internet radio that I really loved, and that allowed me to access, easily, all my favorite programs, working through Reciva, which allows you to set up all your favorite stations/podcasts on-line. That radio, unfortunately, went kaput after about 1 1/2 years, and appears to no longer be available. Read more
I also own a Squeezebox Touch and a Squeezebox Duet. I serve up roughly 8500 tracks from a Linux server running Logitech Media Server (Vortexbox). I bought the Smart Radio to replace a very expensive network music player (from a major reputable AV company) that had great sound but atrocious software, firmware and UI controls. Let me start with the setup. Packaging was great. I own a lot of Logitech gear, and they are the only company that comes even close to Apple as far a quality of packaging, and ease of unpacking. I plugged it in, stepped through the setup for Wi-Fi (entering the 16-digit WPA key is what takes the longest in the setup), immediately navigated down to the built-in hack to convert the firmware to Squeezebox, rebooted, had to re-enter the WPA key (annoying but unavoidable), and voila - instantly recognized my Vortexbox server, and my iPeng iPhone app saw it right away. My "favorite" radio station presets in Logitech Media Server automatically were assigned to the 6 preset buttons on the Smart Radio - awesome! The sound is acceptable but not great. I was pleasantly surprised of the quality, being somewhat of an audiophile, I have relatively high sound standards. It is suitable for a kitchen, bedroom or office. I keep the volume in the 45-65 range usually - haven't pushed it up louder than that thus far. Compared to the Squeezebox Touch (which I easily give 5 stars - that is an amazing piece of kit) and the Duet (again, 5 stars easily) I have just a few complaints. First, it has actually dropped the Wi-Fi connection a couple times, and I can't pinpoint what triggers it. Once was just after I unplugged the charging cable, but another time was just during normal (radio streaming) operation. It always reconnects itself but not always before running out of buffer. However, most of the time it'll just stream away, either local music or internet radio. I cannot rule out transient interruptions in my Wi-Fi router (an Airport Extreme) - however, my other devices don't display the drop-outs - maybe they do but just recover more quickly than the Logitech Radio. Bottom line, I would recommend it. Only issue is that it is discontinued. However, I've got 3 Squeezeboxes and the current Server software and device firmware is as bug-free as anyone could imagine. I see these products lasting several years regardless of no "updates" coming down the line. That's probably a good thing... Pretty much all consumer electronics get discontinued every 1-2 years, and they keep on going. Read more
