Sanyo R227 WiFi Internet Radio
5October 7, 2009 by Atila
- Works wired ethernet or wireless broadband connections
- FM PLL tuning radio
- Media Player to play wirelessly from your PC
- Stereo Aux Input for portable players
- Clock and Alarm function to wake to Internet radio or FM
Product Description
The new SANYO R227 WiFi internet radio is capable of delivering thousands of FREE internet radio stations and podcasts (sports, music, talk shows) from virtually every region of the world! As a stand-alone audio product which does not require a PC to operate or any subscription fees, the R227 provides listeners an easy way to access quality internet radio via a WiFi or broadband Ethernet connection. The R227 delivers exceptional sound performance through the use of … More >>
Category News | Tags: Internet, R227, Radio, Sanyo, wifi
I’m on this page to order my second Sanyo R227! I bought one for our Wyoming home as the only radio you can get here is Rush Limbaugh, Country and Western (not always bad…) and religious stations. Our other home is in the Bay area and we have lots of choices plus Sirius/XM. The R227 was easy to set up with our wireless and now we’re “connected” to the world of radio. I used to be a shortwave listener but I think the Internet has dealt the death knell to that medium, save some sections of the world. The looks, design, sound quality all exceeded my expectations. Clearly we’re in a new age for radio listening. I highly recommend this great receiver to anyone who loves radio.
Rating: 5 / 5
Got my Sanyo R227 Internet radio from Amazon within 4 business days and was ready to rock ‘n’ roll. Easy set up and no problems finding stations to listen to. The sound is super for a clock radio, although I would have liked to see a tone control since the radio is a bit heavy on the bass. Build quality is impressive too. Compact and heavy; not at all cheap looking.
The bad news is that my radio always lost the WiFi signal within 3 minutes of connecting, thus requiring a reboot every time. I called Sanyo service and was met by the most droll, uninterested, tech support man on the face of the earth. He volunteered no helpful info and answered every question that I asked in the most bored, brief, demeanor imaginable. SANYO, find this unhelpful guy and DUMP him! Concluding on my own that my radio was faulty, I decided to exchange the radio at Amazon and I’m now awaiting the new radio. Never one to put all my eggs in one basket, though, I also order an Aluratek radio. I’ll keep whichever radio works best!
Got the replacement radio today (10/6) and everything works great. I’m very impressed with the R227 so far. I’ll be returning the Aluratek to Staples tonight. It’s much smaller than the R227 and doesn’t have the quality feel, or appearance of the R227. It couldn’t beat this Sanyo R227 as a bedside radio since it has only one speaker. The Aluratek unit also has a cheap plastic smell. The Sanyo has no odors to overcome.
Buyers of this great Sanyo radio need to be aware that the 8 presets are, thankfully, not the only way to save your favorite stations. To get many more favorites, you’ll merely log on to [...], enter your radio registration number, and their massive list of Internet stations is quickly at your fingertips. At the Reciva web site you’ll select your favorite stations and, then, when you turn on your radio you find them all listed under MY STUFF on your radio’s menu. In other words, you can have dozens (thousands?) of favorites. You may have to reboot your radio to see them.
My only complaint as of today (10/7) is the searchlight-bright display in the dark bedroom. I’ll need to find some clingy tint film and put it over the screen. You can adjust the radio backlighting, but it doesn’t help. I’ll post more when I find a solution to the light problem.
Oh, I do have one other problem. I want to carry this radio everywhere I go!!!!!!!! (and I have XM in the car)
Rating: 3 / 5
It didn’t take me long to hate this unit. I unpacked the box to find a nice looking piano-black unit, well-packed and pretty small in size. So far, so good. Since I already have a Logitech Squeezebox, and am already fairly geeky, I knew setting this thing up should be pretty easy. I guess I should not have made that assumption because it was anything but easy to set up and use. Instead of spreading out the “pros” and “cons” before you. I’ll just enumerate my findings.
1. The remote: Small. Unbelievably bad placement of controls. The cursor controls are not grouped together (lower left side) and the select buttong is WAY up top above a very large Sleep button (which should have been the Select button). Whoever thought up this design should return their pay for creating this contraption.
2. The display: Looks OK, until you start navigating it. It is fairly hard to read with the bluish backlight. I could actually read the display with the backlight off
3. Nagitation: Awful, simply awful. It seems that each time you start looking for a station it has to go out ro Reciva to grab the list. That takes time. In my case it took about a minute to retrieve 1850 stations. So, the list comes up and the fun begins. There are a handful of stations that I like and listen to on the Squeezebox. It took me less than 10 minutes to set them up on that box, and I can also use the web ui to configure them via a browser. That isn’t the case with this machine. I had to scroll through the list looking for the stations I wanted. When I found them and attempting to listen to them, I could not connect. Trust me, this isn’t a connection issue since my Squeebox works flawlessly on the same network. It is very rare that I have connection issues with the Squeezebox; very rare. When I finally was able to connect to a station at random, the quality was just OK and uninspiring. OK, I know, “what do you expect?”. Well, I guess I was going to be as thrilled as other people who stated their love for this thing. Me? Not so much.
4. Network Performance: When you start up the device it goes out hunting for a connection and it typically takes two or three minutes to even know it’s connected. Perhaps it is trying to connect to [...] and that site is slow; I don’t know. But it’s crappy. When I attempted to connect to a remote server where my MP3 files are it wanted me to enter a user name to the share (I was using Windows Shares, not Windows Media sharing). It left me on the screen where I enter the user name, but I had not clue how to move to the next step (like the password). There was nothing in the docs that tell you how. Silly me, for not using Windows Media.
5. Firmware Upgrade: I upgraded the firmware and that took about 10 minutes. The screen jumped around spasmotically with the update stats at 7% intervals.
6. General UI: The UI (display) wasn’t well thought out. At one point I had two scrolling sentences on the SAME line. When the characters collided they washed each other out. Very buggy. Uncool.
7. On Radio Controls: Although a little easier to use than the remote, the on-radio controls are a cock-up as well. Back button, select buttons, a ring that contans some push buttons (but you can’t really tell until you press on the plastic). Who thought this up? If like somebody just thrown the controls randomly and the box and that’s where they stayed. Never mind about the logical placement (“let see, if they press the up arrow to make a menu selection, maybe we should put the select button close to the cursor so they don’t have to move their fingers far or have to use two hands”).
How long did I have the unit? About 1 hour. I figured if that this device is so frustrating at the start why saddle myself with this thing for 5 or 10 years?
I’ve noticed that often a company’s website can be an indication of how well the company is run. Go try to find the on-line manual for this unit. It’s there. But start at [...] and go on a little easter egg hunt to find the manual. Finding the manual was similar to trying to figure out how the unit worked; frustrating.
My 2 cents. Sorry Sanyo. Take a close, magnigied look at the unit. It looks stylish zoomed out, but zoom in and you will see what I mean about the user-interface. Simply maddening.
Rating: 2 / 5
Had it for a week and the reviews are correct. This is a great product for anyone who wants a bedside radio with limitless capabilities. Sure there are a few drawbacks, the buttons on the remote are not laid out intuitively, there is no way to stop a radio station from playing besides shutting the unit off – in which case it needs to reconnect to your network when coming back on.
8 presets isnt enough but I dont know how many would be – The use of the [...] site makes it so you can add any number of stations and streams to “My Stuff” and it gives you access to everything.
I highly recommend this unit to anyone who wants to bring the world into a small room. As for larger rooms I am not sure if this would be for you.
Rating: 5 / 5
Had to return the first unit when, upon restarting from “upgrade software” mode, the unit froze. A reboot was not possible. The second unit works fine, for the most part. One reviewer wrote, “The backlight is also preset to a rather bright setting, so if you’re using it as an alarm clock . . . you can tone down the brightness within the control panel.” On my unit this dimming function does not work, as the unit goes back to bright after setting it for dim. This is a very big drawback if you are using it bedside as an alarm clock –you will have to put a towel over the unit it is so bright. If anyone can explain how to do this please tell me.
Lastly, the media interface does not work with Macs –it says so in the instruction manual –but it says you can access your “itunes” over the wireless network using a Windows PC. What kind of modern media device, particularly one like this internet radio, would not be compatible with a Mac? I mean, after all, Macs are designed for music media and Mac users are heavy users of the media functionality of Macs, including iTunes. This is a rather absurd non-functionality.
Rating: 3 / 5