Q2 motion-controlled internet radio

It's only rock and roll...

Roll over Beethoven

The Q2 takes about 15 seconds for sound to arrive after switching on, or from deep sleep, while the delay between switching stations is between 3-8 seconds. I managed a respectable 13 hours of use on one battery charge.

Looks neat, sounds fine, a tad pricey though

Though it only has a mono speaker, the audio quality is impressive for the size. It’s quite resonant and largely free from distortion, even at high volume, but not very bassy. Even so, anyone coming into the room would be surprised to find that something so small was delivering such an output.

The best audio quality stations such as Linn and AVRO Klassiek stream 320kbps. 192kbps is more common but the Q2 does a pretty good job even with ones that are only around 48kbps.

It won’t handle personalised ‘radio’ such as Last.fm or, apparently, the on-demand ‘listen again’ content from broadcasters such as the BBC – just podcast versions or live stations. Also, you can’t pause podcasts; if you flip the Q2 in and out of standby it skips back to the start. However, if any of your selected podcasts are regularly updated, they can be picked up by the radio automatically without you having to reconnect to a PC.

Verdict

The Q2 is a piece of cake to operate and just as appealing. Though rather expensive at £90, its convenience, flexibility and unmatched user friendliness mean that it has the potential to broaden the internet radio niche out to a larger crowd. ®

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