![]() You don’t even need a computer to sign up for the included 30-day Rhapsody trial, it just activates when you first click on it. Using a numeric pad for entering letters severely bogged down the frequent searches we performed, and we didn’t once need to enter an actual number.Īfter tapping into an active Wi-Fi connection, Internet radio and Rhapsody both work out of the box. The amount of text entry actually made us wonder why Philips didn’t just break down and include a full QWERTY keyboard. You’re basically clicking through one list of options at a time, navigating deeper or filling search boxes when necessary. Though the sheer number of black buttons speckling the included remote might suggest an elaborate navigation system, almost all of it can be done with the standard directional pad, OK key, and back button. The narrow design of the screen also severely limits text length, to the point where even familiar albums may be so loaded with ellipses that you might not recognize them. That means you’re out of luck if you have an MTV-Cribs-sized media room, and still probably straining to see it if you don’t. We found it comfortable to use from about 6 feet away, difficult but bearable at 12, and impossible at 15. A 3.5-inch screen may be massive on a smartphone, but for a piece of A/V equipment viewed from the couch, you’re going to endure some squinting. Sit down in front of the NP2500 and one of its biggest shortcomings becomes immediately evident – that screen is tiny. For users truly hoping to unlock the possibilities of music via the Internet (not just through a network), these other players offer far more flexibility. Logitech’s Squeezebox devices will play Pandora, Slacker, Sirius, and – again – Rhapsody on top. That might be excusable if other manufacturers also offered the same constraints, but Sonos will do Last.fm, Pandora, Napster, Sirius Internet Radio and Rhapsody. Popular free options like Pandora, Slacker and Last.fm are all missing, essentially roping you into Rhapsody’s paid service if you’re hoping to get any control over what music gets dragged in from the Web. While the NP2500 will pull music from your PC, Internet Radio, or Rhapsody, we couldn’t help but notice some glaring holes in its capabilities. Connectivity comes from either 802.11b/g Wi-Fi (you won’t be slinging HD video, making 802.11n admittedly unnecessary) or a hard line strung into the Ethernet jack. On the back, the NP2500 has RCA analog and digital coaxial output jacks for feeding a conventional stereo, RCA input jacks for bringing in an auxiliary source, and a mini headphone jack (which seems rather inconvenient to place on the back). The only hard buttons strung along the top of the unit control power, the mute function, and volume up and down. Though we didn’t care for the reflections from all the shine, Philips didn’t skimp on the quality of the plastic, and even went for solid metal on the leg propping it up. From the front, the NP2500 looks a bit like a shoe-sized iPhone on a pedestal – especially with Philips’ use of aluminum banding around the edges and copious gloss black cropping in the 3.5-inch screen. To accommodate the screen, it also adopts more of a vertical orientation than the typical slab-like stereo components meant to stack nicely in an A/V cabinet. Unlike most competing Internet radios, including models from Logitech, Grace Digital Audio, and Sonoro, the NP2500 uses a full-color screen set into its narrow rectangular profile, allowing it to show off detailed menus, full album art for songs, and even pictures. NuraTrue Pro hands-on review: A sneak peek at the lossless future of wireless audio The absolute best tech we reviewed last month ![]() Walmart TV deals: 55-inch 4K TV for under $250 and more Priced at $229, it’s significantly less expensive than competing systems from the big guys, but as we found out, Philips makes a number of serious sacrifices to get there, too. While the top-of-the-line NP2900 acts a standalone box with built-in speakers, the cheaper NP2500 works in conjunction with an existing stereo, piping in music from a PC, Internet radio, and Rhapsody. Squeezebox and Sonos may the most common names to crop up on this streaming audio frontier, but Philips’ own low-flying Streamium line delivers many of the same features on a much lower price scale. Perhaps that’s why Internet radios have become an essential add-on for stereo buffs with even the most impressive CD collections. Rolling a dial through a handful of FM stations seems like an ancient exercise, compared to the nearly limitless variety of free music available through Internet radio and other Internet music stops. Hard-to-read screen pushing music from PC causes crashes unintuitive software slow text entry no Pandora
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