Review of the Roberts RD-21
I've been a fan of radios since a child when I would curl up in bed listening to my Mother's Sharp GF-6000, usually to "Red Rose Radio" before it became "Rock FM". As a result I own rather more radios than I really need. A radio I've had for about nine months now is a Roberts Gemini RD-21. It was an impulse purchase, I was in the doldrums and decided a little retail therapy might help. I headed out to Currys and had a look at their digital radios. I was disappointed. In the heyday of DAB radios, like when I bought my Pure Evoke 1, they were expensive but the quality and design was really good. The revival of high quality portable radios couldn't last, as DAB became more mainstream as intended, the designs began to go down market, trying to appeal to people for whom taste has no accounting. Pure bears this out, they started out with what was effectively perfection for their range with the Evoke 1, and have since just tweaked the design getting progressively more bling and plasticky. When they brought out one that is attempting to look like a Marshall guitar amp I realised they'd taken it a bit far.
The only quality radios left that I could see were from Sony, Roberts, and surprisingly a Fergurson - haven't seen that brand for a while. The Sony was disappointing - a beautiful radio spoiled only by cheap, lightweight plastic knobs. Shame on you Sony. The Ferguson suffered exactly the same problem, but was at least a decent price. Regretfully that was them out then, I just couldn't bring myself to spend good money on something that had knobs that felt they were made out of old bottle caps.
Roberts, with their classic portables have sadly trod a similar path to the others recently, and most of their modern looking designs are in fact rebadged Sangean radios - a Taiwanese manufacturer. I'll grant you, they they do make some tat, as Robert's more bling designs surely attest, but Sangean are really a rather good radio manufacturer, and that big radio names like Roberts and Grundig can't even be bothered to make radios anymore and just outsource them from Sangean is a sign both of the quality of Sangean radios, and the depressing trend to outsource everything to the far east in search of a few more mighty dollars to line your pockets with. To hell with integrity eh?
Finally to the RD-21. This is a good looking stereo DAB/FM radio, a glossy modern take on a real Roberts from the 70s, so maybe Roberts do have a fair lot of influence over the design of Sangean's radios. The knobs look and feel good, as do the buttons. There are station presets for your favourite ten stations. FM mode is good, with good selectivity of stations, and fairly free of hiss. Mono/Stereo mode is automatic, but you can manually choose mono if the station is hissy or weak. DAB, despite it's shortcomings sounds good on this radio, and reception seems fine. The blue led lit buttons and LCD display is refreshing though some might find it a little bright and distracting. First niggle - while the backlight remains on when operated from the mains, the light goes off after a few seconds on battery - understandable of course. Without the backlight the display is pretty much unreadable, and you have to press something to make it light up again. So when you're trying to read the scrolling info text on a station and the backlight goes off, you must do something to light it again. Tunning to another station is no good, so you're left with pressing the "info/menu" button, which will take you to another screen - the pratical upshot being it's impossible to read the scrolling station display in battery mode. Talking of batteries, this beast takes 6 alkaline D cells. They aren't cheap, but the radio does have very good battery life for a DAB (It has put in countless hours in our campervan now). The unit will run of mains of course, and unlike many DAB radios, the power supply is onboard, instead of having a big wall-wart and a DC socket. With batteries fitted the radio is heavy and feels substantial - always a benefit in my books.
It's quite easy to destroy the aerial with the handle. If the aerial is up, and the handle down, then attempting to lift the radio by the handle with snag the aerial and bend it. Be careful, I've already done it to mine.
Fire it up, and you'll be quite surprised by the immediate clarity to the sound. It's a bit "bright" by Robert's standards, but you can always tame that with the treble control. The sound is really quite good, the stereo image surprisingly wide, and it goes loud-ish - my only complaint sound wise is that even light use of the bass control will have the little speakers bouncing and distortion comes quickly. Keep the bass down a bit and it will go quite loud without distortion though. Power output is a modest 0.7W RMS per channel which is OK for a radio like this, though a little more wouldn't have gone amiss. This sound of this radio is ideally suited to music rather than speech - I never find myself chilling out to Radio 4 with this. There is line-out socket on the back - in case you wanted to plug it into a stereo system or recorder, along with a headphone socket. Sound output on the headphones sounds very good with excellent bass.
I'd say this makes a great kitchen radio, unless of course you're a heavy Radio 4 listener in which case i'd recommend a warmer sound radio - though beware, it's glossy finish is a magnet for cooking grease. It's also a radio i'd be happy to take on a picnic or to the beach. It's a slightly flawed gem, but with good looks and sound it's very easy to like.