Revo Heritage review

Nostalgia is often overrated, but even we were taken by the stylish, retro appearance of the Heritage, Revo’s latest internet radio and wireless audio player. It’s designed for use as an alarm clock, so it’s compact enough to easily sit on a bedside table.

It can be used as an internet, FM and DAB radio, as well as an alarm clock, iPod dock and an UPnP network audio player. The various functions can be controlled by the buttons located on the unit itself, but these are small and sit flush with the casing so it’s easier to use the included remote instead. The small 2.5in black and white screen doesn’t take advantage of all the available space so you’ll have to stand fairly close to it.

It’s easy to find the internet radio station or podcast you want from the large selection available either by browsing by genre or location or through searching by keyword. Although the selection of content isn’t as vast compared to other internet radios we’ve seen, we still managed to find our favourite country music station from Japan. For content closer to home, a handy menu gives quick access to the BBC’s radio stations.

Annoyingly, you have to use the online web interface on a computer to bookmark a radio station. The web interface can also be used to search for content if the Heritage’s screen is too small for your eyes. Although a handy accompaniment, the dependence on the web interface partially defeats the point of having a dedicated internet radio.

The Heritage also worked flawlessly as an UPnP audio streamer, playing music stored on a networked computer. It recognised our playlists as well as our MP3, WAV, AAC and WMA audio files. Songs can be browsed by metadata such as album and genre, or you can search by keyword.

There’s a USB port for connecting external storage and an iPod dock connector, so music stored externally can also be played. It didn’t recognise a third generation iPod Touch, but it worked flawlessly with a fifth generation iPod and we could even use the remote to control the iPod’s menus. Non-Apple MP3 players can be connected using the auxiliary input.

As expected, the built-in mono speaker only sounds good enough for talk radio. Although surprisingly loud, there’s very little bass, vocals and instruments sound muddy and music can distort at high volumes. There’s a wide choice of outputs for connecting a better sounding set of speakers – phono outputs and an optical S/PDIF connector in addition to the usual 3.5mm stereo socket – but this largely defeats the point of having a compact audio player.

The Heritage can also be used as an alarm clock, playing music from all of the various music sources apart from the auxiliary input. Although you can only save two alarm presets, these can be extensively customised from the volume level to when the alarm should go off – daily, weekdays, weekends or just once. It can be jarring first thing in the morning, since the alarm doesn’t fade in gently.

The Revo Heritage is a compact and stylish network audio player packed with features that are, for the most part, well-designed and useful. The Pure Avanti Flow has the edge though due to its far wider selection of internet radio stations and other online content, although it is also physically larger.