Roberts Play20 Radio

This small, versatile and durable radio is handy for listening outdoors (garden, beach, park etc. pp.) or on a journey in a hotel room - no alarm function though, but everyones got a smartphone, eh :) The reception on FM and DAB+ is outstanding. Except from the fiddle presets 5-10 it is very easy to operate. The sound for its size is very good in my ears. I would have liked rotary dials for volume and tuning, but on the other hand, like it is now the design is very clear. The display is razor-sharp, dimmable and can be turned off completly. The best thing is: you can recharge batteries (NiMh AA) inside the radio. No external device needed. When the batteries wear out after some time - you can replace them by new ones. This is a lot better as an built in Li-Ion accumulator, which mostly can not be replaced or only by qualified personnel. Operational time on batteries is very good - something between 20 and 30 hours - havent stopped the time yet! The bluetooth function (aac) is quite nice, but in the end, this is a RADIO and not a JBL/Anker flip out of the box bluetooth speaker. This one runs on 4 AA-Batteries - keep that in mind! Price: Well, as I said, in the end this is a small portable radio and for the price of 85 GBP / 100 EUR this quite expensive for what it is, but the product is very well-thought-out and durable. In my opinion it is worth it. If you do not set the value on the ROBERTS brand name, there is an almost identical product by sangean (Traveller 760 / DPR 76) without bluetooth, which you may get a little cheaper.

I bought this to be able to receive DAB+, which my previous DAB radio doesn't. I couldn't be more pleased. I bought the grey and white version and it looks very smart. The grey section is rubberised and gives the radio a very nice feel. The build quality is just superb. In the box you get the radio, the power supply/charger and instructions. The charger connects to the radio with a proper power plug - not a flimsy USB like some. DAB reception in my area isn't the best, but this radio works really well for me. Tuning is easy, as is storing presets. FM reception works brilliantly too! Pairing with my iPhone was very straight forward and bluetooth streaming works well. The sound is very good for such a small speaker. The colour info screen is very clear. I did wonder if this would drain batteries quickly, but battery life is excellent. You can also listen with headphones via the 3.5mm headphone jack. This is in stereo, which is great! The thing that swayed me more to this radio was the ability to charge rechargeable batteries in situ with the included power supply. A fabulous feature. There is a little switch in the battery compartment which you set depending on whether you have non-rechargeable or rechargeable batteries installed. Obviously you wouldn't want to try charging non-rechargeable batteries! The charging works well when the radio is off and is indicated by the light on the front plus the screen says battery full when charged. The standard USB socket on the side of the radio is a bit of future proofing from Roberts. It's for future firmware updates. But isn't really used at the moment. This radio exudes quality. Yes, it's a bit more expensive than some, but it feels like it will last! I'm so pleased I bought this!

A really nice little radio. Works on Mains, or Battery. If using NiMH you can charge them in the radio at a switch of a small button inside the back. It looks good, is extremely well made and the sound is better than anticipated for something of this size. It is really easy to get up and running although I struggled to get more than 4 presets to work as there is no documentation with the radio. I found them online at the Roberts site and all is fine now, though including them would have been preferable and why I marked it 4 star and not 5 star.

Despite DAB being a terrible radio format with all stations being compressed in audio and in bit-rate to save money, the radio sounds good - just not great. Like all DAB radios, you can't change the way it sounds, no equaliser settings, many stations play out muffled (doesn't matter which DAB radio you buy). Setting the stations to memory is easy enough, and like most DAB radios, if you accidentally do a full rescan for stations, it also blanks the stations you saved, so you have to spend ages re-adding your favourites. The FM past of the radio is good, sounds better for stations like Classic FM, and also, FM have all the stations in stereo, where 98% of stations on DAB / DAB+ are in mono (even the ones in stereo on FM). Not tested the Bluetooth streaming. Best bit is the radio is powered by 4 AA batteries, so you can use regular or rechargeable (I recommend rechargeables), so your down time is the time it takes to hange the batteries, unlike other radios with built in batteries, which you'd have to put on recharge and not listen at the same time. Is it worth the cost, that's up to you.

When I took this radio out of the book, it looked so small and I was worried the sound was wouldn't be very good, but it is very good. I moved it around from kitchen to study and enjoy the sounds. The controls are easy, looks good and I think a good buy.

Bought this to replace a Uno Logic which suffered from a fatal overdose of abuse. The sound is just a little tinny on pop and electronic music, as some people have observed, but given this unit’s diminutive size I think that it more than meets expectations. However, if like us you mostly listen to speech radio then the Play 20 exceeds expectations, the sound on voice is crystal clear. Also, the sound is (perhaps surprisingly) very decent for classical and other acoustic music. Additionally, this radio is capable of achieving decent volumes (the Roberts Rambler BT, which I also own and like, is quieter despite being significantly larger). On headphones (I’ve just tried it out with a pair of Grado SR80Es) the sound is exceptionally good all round. The lack of rotary controls for volume and channel selection makes this radio a little more fiddly than Roberts radios equipped with these controls, but this is no big issue once you’ve preset the radio stations that you listen to regularly (which was quick and easy, assuming you read the instructions!). Finally, the area where it seems to me that most DAB equipped radios fall down, FM reception is as good as I’ve encountered; we live in an area with rather poor FM reception (several million tons of chalk lie between us and our nearest transmitter) but this radio managed to readily find BBC Radios 3, 4, 2 and Solent. I note that some reviews suggest that this radio may be temperamental for reception in respect of placement, but I wonder whether or not they have tried fully extending the aerial (as per instructions). My initial impressions suggest that this radio is no more temperamental in this respect than any other Roberts radio (and we, for our sins, currently own six in addition to this one). My suggestion, if you have reception problems but decent internet, is to buy an Echo; otherwise, in all respects, for the money and for the size, this is a well thought-out and absolutely first class product. Having the option of using AA batteries or being able to use and recharge rechargeables is the icing on the cake. The addition of a travel pouch to protect the radio might be quite useful. It doesn’t come with one. However, the radio does have a locking mechanism to stop it from being turned on in transit, a very good detail. 23/3/22. I have now tried out some other headphones with this radio and am happy to report that it has absolutely no problem driving 250ohm Beyerdynamic DT990s.

Just in case anyone's looking for data-points on battery usage, I did a test with 4 x fresh Eneloops (1,900mAh each). Volume 10 (so about a third of max and just right for my desk when working), BBC Radio 2, strong signal on DAB, Backlight on the whole time - and it lasted for about 14 hours. No tests done yet with Alkalines. Otherwise it's a cracking little radio. Really nice, great screen resolution/colours (compared to the vast majority it seems - certainly at this price-point), good and loud if needed, sounds much better/louder than any smartphone, very good signal for FM/DAB on the North Wales coast, takes a long time to charge internally, but good that it does at all - they reckon 7 hours, won't play and charge at the same time, so either/or with cable in, be nice if it had a little carry handle I guess, but nit-picking now. Bluetooth works fine from my phone, good and loud - though some tracks distort at full volume - happier at '28' than '32'. The radio sound doesn't distort on full volume so maybe that's a Bluetooth thing - or how audio files are encoded on the phone/streamed. Lovely little dinky radio though which is worth every penny as far as I'm concerned. Bought with my own money.

We are very happy with this radio. We bought it for use in the greenhouse and garden. It is easy to set up and use and the sound is pretty good. We love being able to recharge the batteries we use whilst they are still in situ, no need to buy a separate charger. The radio is clearly well built, I didn't want a wood finish because of where we would be using it. Overall we are happy to recommend it to others. Good value for money.

Bonne radio, conforme aux attentes. Attention toutefois, ce produit étant expédié par Amazon UK, la prise secteur est une prise anglaise non compatible avec nos prises françaises... J'ai failli le renvoyer à cause de ça car ne n'était pas précisé dans la description... Heureusement que j'ai trouvé un vieux câble compatible à la maison. J'ai enlevé deux étoiles pour ce problème, au vu du prix c'est quand même un comble de vendre un produit en France sans le bon adaptateur secteur...

Entspricht meiner Erwartungen.

Una maravilla. Opción de mantener la pantalla en negro para no gastar pilas un acierto. Ligera i bonita

Un prodotto di alta qualità. Design elegante. Ricezione ottima.