PURE Digital Siesta review

PURE Digital Siesta Review

Reviewed by: Nate Lanxon

Reviewed on: 16 August 2007

With the world going crazy for eco-friendliness and worried about carbon footwotsits, it came as no surprise when PURE Digital dropped an uber-Earth-friendly DAB radio into our laps. The Siesta prides itself on having a 1W power consumption when in standby (the average for portables like this is 10W).

The Siesta will set you back £49 and has the usual DAB functions we expect from PURE Digital's labs. Plus you'll have the piece of mind of knowing the system comes with minimal packaging, should you care.

Strengths
While bass and fidelity are lacking from the single speaker driver, overall sound quality is clear and sharp. It's a nice enough bedside radio with excellent reception to boot. It's also a doddle to set up. You'll be ready to go within a minute. The auto-tune kicks things off on its first start-up, meaning no messing around with configurations.

A simple LCD screen is backlit by a dim blue glow, and surprise, surprise -- there are also some big numbers that tell the time. Although there's an FM radio, DAB's where you'll want to spend the most of your time. When listening to a DAB broadcast, station and song info sits on a couple of lines below the clock. You've got the option of setting three alarms, each of which have a range of recurrence options. There's also a snooze timer with a top snooze time of 60 minutes.

Should PURE Digital release an update to the ever-important firmware of an alarm clock, a USB socket built into the base of the system will let you import it. On the top is an all-important headphone socket if the honourable spouse lies in disagreement with the content of the radio station.

Weaknesses
While most of PURE Digital's products exhibit nothing short of terminal ruggedness, the Siesta feels distinctly weedy. It's sturdy, though, and will resist snooze button-related morning batterings. Also a little unsatisfying is the painfully cyclic method of setting alarms -- until you get used to it, alarms can be distinctly confusing to set.

We're sure there's no need for a backlight when in standby -- potential Earth-conscious customers of the Siesta would almost certainly be content with pressing a button to light up the clock at 3am.

Our last gripe is with the FM mode's tuning ability: it's very slow. True, DAB is the main function and its tune speed is almost instantaneous. But for those times when the luxury of digital broadcasts are scarce, the FM portion of the Siesta disappoints.

Conclusion
For £49, this little DAB setup is perfectly acceptable. Sound quality's good, it's easy enough to use once you figure out how to set the alarms and it's not offensively designed. Plus, it'll keep your inner hippy content in knowing that you're not destroying Mother Earth as much as the bloke next door.

If you're more keen on quality sound, check out PURE Digital's own Evoke-2XT. It may be twice the price, but it's a corker of a system to look at and its twin speakers sound like Mother Earth singing morning lullabies into your ears.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday