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PURE Digital Siesta Flow review: PURE Digital Siesta Flow

If you want to wake up to news from any part of the world, or whatever obscure tunes float your musical boat, the Siesta Flow DAB, FM and Internet radio is a great choice. It's not the sturdiest machine you can buy, but it sounds good and it's packed with features, including Wi-Fi connectivity

Nicholas James
3 min read

If you find Wogan wearing and Moyles no longer mirthful, the PURE Digital Siesta Flow bedside radio will let you wake up to more than 10,000 online stations that broadcast their output over the Net. This £100 DAB, FM and Internet radio will also stream your MP3s, and has a neat built-in port for charging your mobile while you sleep.

8.3

PURE Digital Siesta Flow

The Good

Access to online stations; Web-based presets.

The Bad

Casing feels relatively cheap.

The Bottom Line

PURE Digital's growing line-up of Internet-connected radios has another star, in the form of the slimline Siesta Flow. Allowing you to wake up to news from right around the world, or to the sound of African pygmies playing the nasal flute, or whatever else floats your musical boat, the Siesta Flow makes early mornings less painful

Simple set-up
PURE's range of DAB alarm clocks is growing as quickly as ever, with the Siesta Flow adding Internet streaming into the mix. This slimline, almost triangular radio connects to the Internet over your Wi-Fi network, so you can wake up to countless stations from right around the world.

Set-up is a breeze. Touch-sensitive buttons on the front are arranged around a bright OLED display. They walk you through a comprehensive set of menus for picking your network and entering your password. It's rather tedious tapping in the code using up and down arrows and a confirmation button, but this is, at least, a one-time chore. Elsewhere, there are controls for four separate alarms, the volume, a sleep timer and the obligatory snooze bar, which is positioned well and easily found by sleepy hands.

Rammed with features
The Siesta Flow has a DAB+ tuner, so it's relatively future-proof, and, if you download the complementary Flow Server software, you can also use it to stream your MP3 library. A port behind the speakers, which are top-mounted, lets you connect other inputs, such as an iPod or standard MP3 player. Also, to the right, there's a USB power port for charging a mobile phone, media player or other USB-compatible gadget overnight.

All of this, though, plays second fiddle to the main attraction -- the Wi-Fi streaming capability. By registering the Siesta Flow with PURE, you can search for, store and organise favourite stations through a standard Web browser, with a matching list showing up on the radio. Likewise, any favourites you set on the radio itself are synchronised with PURE's site. Better still, if you have several PURE Wi-Fi radios, such as an Evoke Flow, Avanti Flow or the new Sensia, your favourites lists will be accessible on each of them.

Build and performance
The Siesta Flow's sound quality is good, if not excellent, but few bedside radios are built for extended listening, and the speakers in this model, although slightly lacking in bass, are more than capable of the task they're intended for.

The aerial is a simple length of wire that extends from the base of the unit. The only management feature is a small clip that threads it through a channel. How you want to organise it once beyond the radio is up to you, but we found Blu-Tack or putty to be the best solution. Despite its diminutive size and fairly unimpressive appearance, the aerial proved up to the job of delivering the full range of stations available in our area to both the DAB and FM tuners.

The Siesta Flow's overall build quality is fair, but the casing feels cheap when compared to the bulk of PURE's line-up, which has spoiled us over the years with maple cases, tactile buttons and reassuring weight. Even sibling products, such as the machines in PURE's Chronos line of bedside radios, are sturdier and weightier.

Conclusion
The PURE Digital Siesta Flow is a great product, and a must-have for homesick expats who want to wake up to a one-time local station. A small, easy to use and well-considered machine, it's a winner in our book.

Edited by Charles Kloet