 - Wired or wireless connection
- Infrared remote control
- Large, easy to read 3 line display
- High quality full-range stereo speakers
- Play your music collection from your computer
List Price: $299.00
Lowest Price: Too low to display 
Product Description: The Sangean WFR-20 Wi-Fi Internet Radio offers direct access to over 6000 Internet Radio stations (and 21242 on-demand streams) in 250 locations from 60 genres. This allows you to drill down your search quickly and conveniently from your radio or by using your favorite web browser and a computer you can search for specific stations with the convenience only the internet can provide and upload those stations to your radios ?MY Stations? folder allowing for quick and easy access to only the most desired stations. Don't find your favorite internet station on the list? Just submit the station to the website and it will be researched and added to the list, available for all of the current 14,000+ subscribers! Don't have a computer? Not a problem with the WFR-20. It still provides you access to the same internet radio stations and is designed to work as a completely independent stand alone unit anywhere in your home, office or dorm. All you need is a broadband internet connection and a wired or wireless router. Used in conjunction with your wired/wireless networked computer and Windows Media Player you have full access to your digital media library using the UPnP Server, or simply your Microsoft Shared File Folder function in MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, Real Media, and AIFF formats.
File formats utilizing DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection or other copy-protection features may not be supported. Use of a UPnP server may increase compatability, but is not a gurantee. Sleep timer with gentle fade Auxiliary Input socket for adding your iPod, MP3 player, etc Line Output Headphone port for optional earphone Intuitive Menu system Operate from single rotary control or compact, stylish remote control High-gloss Piano-black finish Acoustically tuned cabinet for great sound WiFi 802.11b/g wireless and wired Ethernet connections (10/100 Mbps, RJ-45) Connects to Windows Shares or UPNP servers Unit Amazon.com Product Description: The Sangean WFR-20 Wi-Fi Internet Radio offers direct access to over 6,000 internet radio stations and 21,242 on-demand streams in 250 locations from 60 genres. This allows you to drill down your search quickly and conveniently from your radio. You can also use your favorite web browser and a computer to search for specific stations and upload those stations to your radios. The "MY Stations" folder allows quick and easy access to your most desired stations. Don't find your favorite internet station on the list? Just submit the station to the website and it will be researched and added to the list, available for all of the current 14,000+ subscribers. Don't have a computer? Not a problem with the WFR-20. It still provides you access to the same internet radio stations and is designed to work as a completely independent stand alone unit anywhere in your home, office or dorm. All you need is a broadband internet connection and a wired or wireless router. Used in conjunction with your wired/wireless networked computer and Windows Media Player you have full access to your digital media library using the UPnP Server, or simply your Microsoft Shared File Folder function in MP3, AAC, WMA, FLAC, Real Media, and AIFF formats. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-18
What a blast! One great piece of technology.
Recently my wife bought me a Sangean WRF-20 for my 7th AA birthday. I had been eying these machines for many months but would not spring the money. I am 43 years old and a short wave listener from childhood. I am also an Extra class ham radio operator, KC0LFW. For a living, I am an 'Electronics and Instrumentation Technician' at a large chemical plant.
This radio is fantastic! It is like short wave radio on steroids. After I powered it up the unit found my home network. I had to manually go to my wireless router and enter the radios MAC address. After another scan I was listening to the one factory default station, BBC.
Next I dialed up KIWI FM from New Zealand and set it as Preset #1. This is without looking at the book. I had a problem registering the radio at the Reciva site. After they emailed me back I corrected the problem. My mistake. The register and serial numbers are in hexidecimal. This means you only use numbers 0 through 9 and the letters A through F. What I thought was the letter "g" was actually the number "9". So write them down carefully.
The sound is comparable to a Bose Wave. Very good frequency response. I can feel the base with the volume set low. Ease of use is a 10. If I can fugure out how to use it without opening the manual, it must be easy. The remote works well as does the single button/ knob. I worried about this when debating buying the radio but I actually like it. It is very natural and has a positve, well-made feel. The display brightens up when you use change settings of any kind and then fades to dim after a few seconds.
Who would I buy one of these for? ANYONE! There is so much to listen to it is hard to know where to begin. A person can find any type of radio station located any where on the planet- and it is there. I would give the unit 10 stars if Amazon had them.
David Walkup
Rating:
Date: 2008-06-13
Works like a charm!
This is a well-built product from Sangean and it has surpassed my expectations so far. I was looking for something that can play continuous music like Smooth Jazz or Classical without having to pay for Sirius or XM charges each month. Sure I could play all the Internet stations on my laptop, but its not the same as listening to them on a stand-alone device. Another option was buying an HD radio, but you are still limited to 10-15 HD radio stations in the area.
Pros:
1) It performs its function as a Wifi radio very well. It updates the radio station list from reciva.com everytime it is rebooted (remove power and plug it back in). The buffering time for most radio stations is between 5-10 seconds and it seldom has problems with bandwidth (I have comcast internet with Wireless-G router)
2) Sound quality is very good. I am not sure how it compares to a Bose Wave radio, but it certainly compares will with my Panasonic audio system. I listen to everything from Classical to Techno and this radio has been delivering clear, crisp sound in every situation. Its very clear till about 75% max volume and at that volume it is loud enough to have a house party.
3) Podcasts are easy to setup via the reciva website. I have NPR 7 am news, and WSJ audio feeds setup and it works really well.
4) Overall menu and interface is good. Its not too hard to navigate, but having only one knob can make it a bit cumbersome.
5) As a media player over uPnP, this radio rocks. For those who are not familiar with uPnP servers, this radio can play streaming audio from your home computer on the same network. So, you just go to windows media player and set it up to share media and then you can play all the MP3's and WMA's on your home computer from the Sangean radio. You can search for songs by album, artist, genre etc and setup a queue/playlist of songs and they sound great!
Cons:
1) The remote is good, but sometimes you have to press the buttons pretty hard. I have noticed that about 1 in 5 times I have to press the buttons twice to get the response. It is annoying, but not really a big deal.
2) The menu system on the radio needs a bit of improvement. It works and does all the intended functions, but some of the features take way too may steps.
Overall I 'highly recommended' this product
Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-11
DOA
The first radio arrived DOA. The second radio played well for about 10 minutes before the display froze when I tried to input another station. It then went blank and never recovered. I was of the opinion that there was a bad batch of these radios and it was just my bad luck to encounter them. However, the replacement radio had a number of small scratches on the bottom and now I'm wondering if Amazon had shipped me a returned or refurbished item. I paid for a NEW radio in good working order, NOT a RETURNED or REFURBISHED item. Rating:
Date: 2008-06-04
Excellent Radio
My radio arrived last week. It is my first wifi radio and I had waited a long time before purchasing in order to do as much research as possible and read all the available reviews. I'm very glad I finally took the plunge.
The radio set itself up, pretty much as advertised, right out of the box. I did have a brief unknown problem finding an IP address or something, but it worked itself out when I restarted the radio by unplugging and plugging back in.
My results have been great. This radio basically brings the world of radio right to your home without the antenna systems, signal fade, and interference problems of shortwave and with high quality clear audio. And, it offers the thousands of stations and streams that you'd never be able to recieve on a shortwave radio.
While I appreciate having one-button operation on the radio, I do find it convenient to have the remote control handy in order to use the "back" button and to navigate up and down in menus while listening to a station. If you want to go "back" in a menu using the radio itself, it can sometimes take awhile to get where you need to be, and if you want to look for other stations while listening to another, using the radio button requires you to start at the top and then dive back down into the menus. With the remote, you can explore the stations in the same subcategory listed before and after the station you are listening to at the press of a single button. If you are the type who just wants to find your favorite stations and spend less time searching around eventually, this would become less of an issue. The remote also seems to have good range across a room. The battery for the remote was included.
The radio only has 12 presets, and it really should have more. But, this is not really a problem because if you register with [...], you can add an unlimited amount of stations (at least I haven't hit a limit yet) to your "My stations" folder. In effect, this list becomes your presets, and though there are a few extra steps to get to the list of "My Stations" as compared to accessing a preset station, it's not inconvenient to access these at any time. Anytime I find an intersting station while tuning around, I make a note to add it to "My stations" from the website later.
I have had very few occasions where a station didn't connect, and that is probably just because it is offline at that time. The sound quality is awesome. My radio has never been more than about 50 feet from my linksys broadband router (with cable internet) and I have had almost no problems with buffering, the notable exception being with BBC1, which, ironically, is the station that comes preset in preset 1 on the radio. I believe this has to do with the BBC1 stream; I know BBC1 is their most popular stream and I imagine that many people are trying to use it at the same time.
I have had a couple of experiences with an "internal error" message mentioned in other reviews. I don't know why this happens, but after about 20-30 seconds, the radio resets itself and reconnects to whatever I was listening to at the time. Really not a big deal for me so far, and as I said before, I've never had a perfect radio.
My media player function works really well and it is a pleasure to hear all the music stored on the computer through such quality speakers. The only problem I have had is with podcasts. To me, this is an extra feature anyway, so not a big deal, but when I try to stream podcasts from "my podcasts" which are saved in my profile at [...], the stream always stops at some point. Eevntually, the stream starts over but there is no way to fast forward to the point at which it stopped, so as far as my experience goes, the podcast feature is not a selling point on the radio.
All in all, I am very pleased with the unit and highly recommend it. It does everything I expected it to and more, and what it does, it does better than I had hoped.
Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-01
Works Well.
Works Well.
Just wish faster connecting to each radio station (but probably not the fault of the machine). Takes about 10 seconds. |
