Digital Home Thoughts: Slacker Portable Radio Finally Gets It Right?

"Just when we’d concluded that there was nothing new under the sun when it comes to digital music players, along comes the Slacker Portable Radio to smash all our preconceived notions. This $200 device takes the music-discovery innovations pioneered by Pandora and Last.fm and puts them in the palm of our hand. The hardware works with Slacker’s Internet radio service, but you don’t always need to be tied to a live Internet connection for it to work. Using your PC you can populate the radio with either pre-fab radio stations or create custom stations by populating them with your favorite artists. Slacker’s software will then identify other artists of the same vein. You can fine-tune each station by adjusting how aggressively it exposes you to artists and songs other than those you’ve identified as your favorites, how often it plays popular songs versus those closer to the fringe, and whether it plays only current tunes, just the classics, or some combination of the two."



Michael Brown from Maximum PC definitely likes this device - he gave it a 9 out of 10 rating and a highly-coveted Kick Ass Award. Myself, I'm not so sure - if I'm going to carry a device with a four-inch screen, I'm going to want to use it to watch videos, not listen to music. The ideas behind this device are certainly interesting though - I like the idea of exploring new music with a like/dislike approach.