Intempo RDi iPod speaker dock: Dabbling with DAB
Intempo's RDi iPod speaker system blends a set of speakers for your iPod with the functionality of a DAB radio. Could this beat PURE's best efforts to snag this market for themselves?
So you're thinking about Christmas gifts? Perhaps on one hand you're considering a new DAB radio. On the other, you might be considering an iPod speaker system. It's time you put those hands together. Intempo's snazzy RDi iPod docking system is both a digital radio and a set of speakers for your iPod.
This sort of convergence makes sense, especially since the iPod is natively sans-radio even this many years into its life. The RDi dock has a price tag of £129, so it's only slightly more costly than DAB experts PURE Digital's promising Chronos iDock system -- a £99 setup that offers near identical functionality, and which we'll be getting our hands on soon.
So what's on the inside? Well, it's got 30W of driving power, a promise of decent sound (does anyone ever promise just average sound?), 16 presets for saving favourite stations, alarm clock functionality and it looks pretty too. But to be honest, we're not 100 per cent sure there's anything significantly more impressive on offer than what PURE's Chronos iDock offers.
Despite all this, the proof will be in the pudding. We've literally just received a model for review and it may transpire that the RDi spits on the freshly dug grave of PURE's triangular competitor. This, ladies and gentlegeeks, will be a fight to the death and we sure as heck aren't sure who to put our money behind. Watch this space for the showdown. -Nate Lanxon
Update: A full review of the Intempo RDI is now live.