Grace Digital Mondo Elite Classic Smart Internet Radio Bluetooth Wi-Fi Qi-Wireless Fast Charger 7-Day Alarm – Microphone-Free (Walnut)

This radio is an excellent answer to the modern age for us older folks that grew up on radio. With all the available streaming services, it's nice to have something that isn't programmed to track you and present stuff based on an algorithm. With radio, you get what comes down the pipe. The functionality is excellent with a nice method of navigating. The knobs are nice feeling with a nice subtle click feedback as you rotate. The display looks good and is very readable and has a nice glow when the device is off. The size is good as a table top device, close to the size of a shoe box, but it's a little large if you were using it on a small nightstand. The sound is great with a noticeable amount of bass when you set up the equalizer. It's not super hifidelity quality like a high end stereo, but fills the room with plenty of great sound. The hardest part is probably combing through all the services and the stations you can choose to add to your presets (up to 99, though the buttons on the front are quick sets only for the first 10). The website to pick and choose the curated list of 100,000s of stations is easy to use, But there are many stations that don't seem to work. So once you choose to save them in your folder, you have to go through and check out if they are dead or not. They do state that you can send them the station info and they can either update the feed or remove it if it's gone. I also recommend the mobile phone app since that is a super easy way to navigate really fast. Chromecasting and Bluetooth work well. The remote is usable and has all the buttons you would need, but it feels a bit cheap compared to the quality of the radio. This thing has been a joy to use so far and highly recommended. The price for the quality is worth it. One thing to note: the battery that makes these Grace Digital radios portable does not work on this model even though the battery says its for an "Elite" model (different radio) and Amazon seems to show it as being frequently bought together. So don't buy the battery or you will be returning it.

You might ask, why buy one of these when you can use a smart speaker? The answer is ease of use. The Mondo Elite has a nice selection of user controls on the radio, including multiple ways of accomplishing the same thing. If you wake up at night, you can roll over and punch a preset button to play a podcast or internet radio station (power comes on when you press the numbered preset button). You can even press the snooze button on the top to tell the podcast to turn off after some time (you can set the length of time). so it doesn't wake you later. I could do that with an Alexa Echo, but by the time I remembered and made all of those commands I'd be completely awake!The process of entering podcasts or radio stations is kind of awkward -- you have to use a phone app to find it, then save it to "my stuff." But it works, and after you find the podcast, it is easy to prestore an episode or internet radio station on the face of radio.When you use a preset, you only preset to any specific podcast episode, not the whole series sequentially, which is either good or bad depending on your goal. I couldn't get some of my local radio stations onto the device. And believe it or not, THERE IS NO REGULAR OVER-THE-AIR TERRESTRIAL TUNER ON THIS RADIO. Seems like an obvious omission that would have been cheap and easy to produce. I like that the clock display is customizable so you can decide what's bright enough to see but not so bright as to wake you up. In all, this is like plugging the internet into a high end clock radio. Without the actual radio.

Took a while to set up, but it wasn't too bad. Good product, with a lot of positive features. I found it worthwhile.

I wanted to get a nice table radio for my bedroom. This radio has all the features I need. You can either use it as a table radio for a room, or a bedroom radio with alarm clock. This radio does both, and feature packed. My user case is for a bedroom radio that has all the stations including Sirius XM. I have to use my iPad and a speaker. I like to go to sleep by listening to sports at night. My local stations reception is not the best and this is why I bought this radio. Here is my review:This radio is well made and feels like the radio I replaced. It has a nice feature set - the instructions aren’t the greatest IMHO - but you can figure out how to work the features with common sense.The WiFi connected very easily to my network. Then finding the local radio stations was easy too. But as I found them, I could get no sound even though the station was locked in. But since this radio has Audacy and I Heart Radio, you can find your locals thru those two, since they are the biggest radio networks. I found my locals that I wanted. Sirius XM was easy to integrate, as my favorites that I use on my iPad immediately came up. Next was creating my presets. It was easy to do. But if you are using it in my case, it is best to put your five favorite stations - even though it holds ten - you don’t want to use the shift button in the middle of the night or half sleep. I learned how to feel for the five stations I often use. No problems there. You can preset up to 100 stations on this radio. The lighting is great enough and you can set the brightness or color of the digital clock. The daytime / nighttime feature for the screen is fantastic. You can set the brightness for certain times of the day and the night. It’s decent on my eyes. The alarm is loud enough - I set mine on buzzer- and works fine. So does the snooze button. Unfortunately, I can’t charge my iPhone 14 in an OtterBox case because of the camera bump. It won’t sit flush on the charger. Not a deal breaker.The sound is very good on this radio. Music sounds are great, and voices are clear. You can use the EQ for a custom sound, but the stock settings is good enough. The stations I listen to at night sound crystal clear. And I can now listen to channels on XM at my bedside. The app works well. It recognized the radio without issues. I use an old iPhone 7 as my remote, instead of my phone. The radio remote is decent, but I prefer to use the phone. My presets come up as a list on the phone, and changing channels is very smooth.Here is the bad thing about this radio:For the cost and price point of this radio, it should have an integrated Ethernet port. Not a dongle. After the first day of using this radio, the sound cut out, because the WiFi wasn’t connecting. My WiFi works well, but sometimes internet radio or XM cuts out. I called the tech support, and had to reset the radio twice. I told them that I needed a usb to Ethernet connector, but you have to use a special adapter. A common one will not work. They don’t have any on the website at all. Fortunately, I had to go elsewhere and got one thru C Crane, which sells them. I got the adapter two days later. The funny thing is that they also sell the Mondo version of the radio. It works beautifully, even though it has an orange glow. It is behind the radio, so you can’t really tell. No connectivity issues or dropouts at all. I am very happy with this purchase.I haven’t went into all of the features of this radio yet. But as I said, for the price point I would like better instructions on how to use the radio to the fullest. Secondly, the push buttons for the presets should be backlit - and dimmable like the main screen. And most importantly: it must be wired instead of WiFi. I don’t like WiFi connections for a streaming device - I want a solid internet connection. Some places in your home or room, the WiFi gets wonky, and drops the connection.This radio is a winner. I would by a second for my office if I had the chance. I gave it four stars because of the “iffy” instructions, and the lack of an Ethernet port. Otherwise, it would easily be five stars. It’s the best available.EDIT: Have been using this radio for a couple of weeks. It's been fantastic. No issues with the internet radio dropping out - as long as you have a wired connection. It's also been great as an alarm clock. it's worth the price I paid for it.