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Strengths: Easy to use, clear display, good reception, excellent range of DAB stations
Weaknesses: Odd manual tuning for DAB stations, fiddly to fit the DAB aerial, no Long Wave
Summary: I had been very keen to get a DAB radio in my car for some time, but the price was just ridiculous. I was very pleased to find this JVC model for around £180, incuding an essential DAB aerial - windscreen mounted in my case (JVC HAL-1). I fitted it myself - the unit itself was easily fitted, the aerial was a bit more tricky as we had to work out how to run the cable down the side-pillar and behind the dashboard.
I was nervous that reception would be poor on DAB and I wouldn't be able to get many channels. That turned out to be completely unnecessary - the unit has picked up every channel I can get on my home DAB set and some more.
Switching between DAB channels is smooth and easy. On some other DAB radios there has been a problem with long pauses between channels as the unit retunes - not so with this JVC. When on the move the unit retunes seamlessly to local signals. My reception has been generally excellent, but when occasionally DAB isn't available it retunes to the equivalent FM signal if available. It then retunes back to DAB when it becomes available again!
Traffic announcements with RDS work fine, either on FM or DAB. The Programme Type searches (PTY) - so pointless on an FM radio with its limited number of stations - is actually worth using on DAB.
When manually tuning DAB stations, this unit has a slightly strange way of behaving. It searches until it finds an "ensemble" of about 6 stations, which you can then flick through using the up and down keys. However, there are many more stations on other ensembles if you push and hold the up or down key. It's a bit tricky moving rapidly between stations on different ensembles when tuning manually. I don't understand why it is designed to do this - I don't care what ensemble I'm on, I just want to see all the available stations! However, once you have saved your favourite stations to the presets (6 x 3 on DAB and FM and 6 on AM) it's easy enough to jump between stations, whatever ensemble it is on.
FM and AM are fine, as you would expect. My old radio had LW as well, which I have now lost. I only used that for cricket coverage, and since that is also on DAB (Radio 5 Sports Xtra) it's not a huge loss.
Don't ask me about sound quality - I think it sounds fine, as good as my previous Sony on both radio and CD, but then I'm not an audio freak so I probably couldn't tell you... I'm more interested in the range of stations, especially the much wider range of speech radio available on DAB. I can't honestly say that DAB sounds a lot clearer than a good FM signal, but it is either on or off - no fuzzy in between. It is certainly a lot clearer than AM or LW, which is a great improvement for stations like Virgin, Five Live and the cricket on long wave.
JVC make a big feature of their presets for bass, treble etc, according to music type - Rock, Classic, Pop etc. A fairly large part of the display is dedicated to telling you which preset you are on. I think this is fairly pointless - most people are quite happy to pick their own levels and leave it at that. You can still do that, using the User preset. Changing between the presets is a bit clumsy, involving pressing 2 or 3 buttons in the correct sequence, which I can rarely remember to do and usually don't bother.
Overall - very pleased
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