XM2Go, the company’s portable satellite radio platform, was launched late 2004 in the form of the Delphi MyFi that received XM radio on-the-go and allowed five hours of recording. The new lineup improves on the function and design of the product, and adds MP3/WMA support. We got a hold of Pioneer’s Inno XM2Go product, but the Samsung Helix is functionally identical, and cosmetically pretty close too.
The Inno (or Helix), a hair larger than Motorola’s RAZR cell phone, sports a color LCD screen (larger than the screen on the S50), 1GB of storage for 50 hours of XM radio recording (or a mixed amount of XM and MP3s), a built-in antenna for listening when you’re out and about, and very intuitive user controls. It ships with a cradle for charging and connecting to your home stereo. A car kit is sold separately (in the original XM2Go, the car and home cradles were both included).
The unit is much easier to use than previous XM2Go radios. The up and down buttons allow you to shoot through the various XM channels quickly. Hear a song you like, and just press the center button to record it, or you can have it record the channel until the memory runs out—since the Inno contains a memory buffer, you can actually capture an entire song even when you don’t press the record button until the song is halfway finished. Most people will want to schedule recordings ahead of time, either to capture their favorite programs or to just fill up on a couple of channels, and unlike the Delphi, you aren’t restricted to two 2-hour slots. I set my Inno to record several hours every night when it’s docked in the home cradle, so when I grab it in the morning it’s automatically full of new music. When you want to listen to your recorded music, press the mode button to switch into “My XM.” You can select from playlists created on the fly (or on your PC), listen by channel, genre or artist. I like to set it to random play so I can listen to music recorded from several XM channels (my favs–channels 52 and 53). You can also mix up the MP3/WMA tracks transferred from your PC. The only recording drawback is that you can’t move the XM tunes off the Inno onto your PC or another device, and when you cancel your XM subscription, those tunes disappear.
Transferring music from the PC to the Inno requires the Napster software, which isn’t the best in the industry for moving your files around, but it’s OK. You can also tag XM tracks for purchase through Napster, assuming that track is in the Napster library.
Like all other portable or plug-n-play satellite radios, the Inno includes a built-in FM modulater for listening to the product through your car’s FM stereo. In the Inno, the strength of the FM signal is greatly improved over other models and was robust enough to cut through most FM traffic. The optional car kit does include a cassette adaptor if you have a tape player in your car.
When out of the car, I got a respectable 10 hours of battery time while playing back recorded music, but that drops to about five hours while using it for live radio. XM reception with the Inno’s built-in antenna was good in cities where repeaters were abundant (such as Philadelphia or New York), but out in the suburbs, I was only able to get a good signal when docked with the external antenna (car or home).
Overall, this is the best digital music player I’ve used, and the best satellite radio to date. By combining both satellite radio and the MP3 player, the Inno is perfect for those people who can’t decide into which format to put their money. This clearly is one of those best-of-both-worlds scenarios. If the $399 price is a little steep for you, Samsung offers a cheaper model, the neXus, that opts for a mono display instead of the Inno’s color and only receives XM programming when docked. yy
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