Pure One Flow

Internet radio has become as ubiquitous as over-the-air radio. While you can still tune into the stations around you, you can just as quickly tune into radio stations from across the state, country, and world with the Internet. Thousands of online-specific Internet radio stations make the selection even better. The Pure One Flow lets you access all of these radio stations just like you would your local stations with a portable radio. This $149 (list) device features built-in Wi-Fi and a very useful Web favorites list, but it lacks too many services and its audio quality is disappointing.

Design
The device measures a small but thick 5.8 by 8.1 by 3.1 inches (HWD) and weighs a solid 1.4 pounds without a battery pack. With just two knobs, five navigation buttons, and a power button, the One Flow looks less like an Internet-connected device and more like a standard, heavily built portable radio. A six-line green LCD screen offers a mostly text interface that can be navigated easily using the Select knob and the five buttons under the screen. There are no bright graphics, color animations, or other visually impressive flair on the screen?just some text information to let you quickly navigate the different audio services. A remote control would have been welcome, but using the One Flow is simple enough even without one.

The right side holds the power button, a mini-USB port for an Ethernet connection (if you don't want to use the built-in Wi-Fi), an auxiliary input, and a headphone output (both 3.5mm). The back of the One Flow holds the port for the power cable and the battery compartment, though the battery is optional. If you want to carry the One Flow around without plugging it in, you need to get the $50 ChargePAK E1 from Pure. Similarly, the USB Ethernet adapter is also optional, and not as readily available in the US as the Flow One and ChargePAK E1.

Services
Out of the box, the One Flow can tune into over 19,000 different Internet radio stations, 8,000 different on-demand recordings, and 140 different ambient sound recordings through The Lounge, Pure's online music service that integrates into the radio. The One Flow can also tune into any local FM radio stations through its 30-inch telescoping antenna. Unlike the Grace Digital Victoria Nostalgic Internet Radio ($229.99, 3 stars) or the NPR Radio by Livio ($149.99, 3.5 stars), it can't tune into streaming media services not on The Lounge. This means you can't listen to Pandora, Slacker, or any other commonly-used streaming audio services on it. There are still thousands of choices, and you can always plug in your smartphone or iPod to tune into streaming music services from there, but it's a big omission for an Internet radio device.

Besides letting you browse different Internet radio stations on the One Flow itself, the device can work via The Lounge to sync favorite stations you find on your computer. By registering your radio, you can go to The Lounge and choose various live radio, on-demand audio services, and Pure's Pure Sounds ambient noise library stations and put them in different favorites folders. Those folders appear automatically on the One Flow. Since navigating several layers of text menus on a small screen with a knob is tedious, the ability to sync your favorite stations through your computer is very handy, and makes putting together a list of stations much faster.

Performance
Audio quality is less than impressive. With just one 3.5-inch driver and a peak output of 2.5 watts, it can't get very loud. When it tries to get loud, like with Tool's "Aenema" on an alt-rock Internet radio station, the bass distorts heavily without producing much force. While the radio is listenable, it doesn't reach beyond sounding like a portable radio. If you want anything remotely like an audiophile experience, look elsewhere. This is strictly for listening to Internet radio stations and over-the-air radio with ease, and without much concern for the audio quality, though the relatively low price helps somewhat. Adding insult to injury, the different Internet radio stations have different baseline volume levels that the radio makes no effort to mitigate. Switching from Steely Dan to Tool, a modestly quiet-sounding folk rock track exploded into grating, distorted alt-rock without me touching the volume knob.

The Pure One Flow is an inexpensive way to listen to music from the Internet and the air, but its mediocre audio quality holds it back. The Lounge integration that lets you make lists of your favorite stations on the computer instead of with the few controls on the One Flow is handy, but the lack of custom streaming music services outside of Pure's selection is a big flaw. Unlike other Internet radios we've looked at, it's one you can take out to the porch or backyard easily, but if you want this to be a truly portable radio, you'll need to spend extra on a battery pack. All told, depending on your needs, the One Flow could be a good way to listen to Internet radio stations around the house.

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