Hands-on with the Tangent Uno FM radio
Tangent's Uno is a back-to-basics FM/AM radio, with a beautiful retro design and enough 3.5mm sockets to keep it working with iPods. For £90 this could be an ideal Christmas present for your dad
Being at the journalistic forefront of the technological juggernaut that is the 21st century, Crave doesn't often cover tech that's been around since the first half of the previous century. We've made an exception today for Tangent's Uno -- a monaural, FM/AM tabletop radio.
"What? Are you high? There's no DAB? You must be joking," we hear you exclaim. Well, high (on the third floor of the CBS Interactive building) we may be. But joking, we most certainly are not. This is truly a back-to-basics piece of work from Denmark, with the main feature being its lack of features, a gorgeous design and a sub-£100 price tag.
Having said that, around the back you have ports for outputting audio to a subwoofer or stereo speakers, or inputting audio from an iPod or other audio source. Headphones can be plugged in around here too, but this should really have been stuck somewhere on the front.
A huge knob handles tuning, and the rotations are mirrored by the rotary dial on the left-hand side. Our resident ham and old-time radio know-it-all Rupert Goodwins wished, on his knees in fact, that the dial glowed orange. But it doesn't glow at all, so you'll struggle to read the dial in the dark.
It sounds smashing, with a deep, rich, warm sound, helped by the all-wooden 7mm-thick cabinet, and a deep, gentle bass. The single speaker driver is mounted in the top and has an exhaust port around the back.
For about £90 we're really fond of this radio. We wouldn't mind tuning knobs that felt a little less plasticky, but as a complete package it's grand, and an ideal Christmas present. If you do want DAB and CD playback, however, you might consider a Tangent Cinque, which we reviewed back in April.