Pure One Classic Series II digital radio

This radio will tune into DAB (digital) radio stations, standard FM stations and it has a headphone-style line-in socket so you can plug in a portable player and listen to it through the One Classic's speakers.

Whether you'd want to do that is another matter – the speakers on this device were fine, though not particularly good quality. Spoken words came out well, but most music was rather muffled, and there's no way to adjust bass or treble levels. The volume went quite loud without any distortion, however.

There's also a mini-USB socket on the side, though this is only used for upgrades. It can be powered using the supplied mains adapter, six large ‘C' batteries or one of Pure's Chargepak rechargeable batteries, which would be a better choice if you'll be taking it outside.

It's not small (21cm wide, 15 cm tall and 7cm deep), but it's not heavy either, and the white plastic finish is not flimsy. The extendable aerial is quite long – well over 1m – at its full length.

All the options and settings are accessed through the knob on the front – to change volume you first press Volume then turn the dial, to change station you press Stations and turn the dial, and so on. This includes presets – there are no dedicated preset buttons; instead, you have to press Preset and select one of the 15 allotted presets with the dial, which is not much easier than just scrolling through the full list of stations.

A power-saving mode can be switched on, but all this does is stop the radio from collecting the text data that some stations transmit, when it's in standby. Otherwise this data can be viewed using the Intellitext menu option – it could be handy if you're following a sporting event, for instance, where the display shows running scores.

A listen later mode records set stations at set times to the radio's internal memory. It'll change the station if you're already listening and was a bit fiddly to set but is handy if there's a program you miss every day or week but want to hear.

The button layout of the Pure One Classic Series II made it hard to figure out at first, but once we got used to it we found it a good-quality radio for the kitchen or somewhere similar.