Review: Polk Audio I-Sonic ES2

In the criminally-underrated Get Shorty, a rental car company gives Chili Palmer (John Travolta) an Oldsmobile Silhouette instead of the Cadillac he requested. “Well, this is the Cadillac of mini-vans” is what he’s told to help ease the pain. For a lot of people – and sadly myself included – a mini-van is a useful, practical and necessary component of daily life, but it’s not something you like to talk about at parties. I would put the clock radio in that same category. A table radio usually does little more than tell time and attempt to fill your room with background music that sounds mediocre at best. If this sounds depressingly familiar, feast your eyes on Polk Audio’s I-Sonic Entertainment System 2. Or as I like to call it, “The Cadillac of Clock Radios.”

With a $500 price tag, you probably expect the ES2 to do a bit more than just tell time – and it does. For starters, the ES2 is an HD Radio. Unlike XM and Sirius satellite radio, HD Radio is an enhancement to terrestrial broadcasts. In addition to improved audio performance – which can sometimes border on CD quality – HD Radio allows broadcasters to “multi-cast” multiple program streams on a single FM frequency. For example, 98.5-1 might have music, 98.5-2 might have news and traffic while 98.5-3 might have sports talk. In northeast Connecticut, my HD Radio station choices are on the slim side, but there are a few and the ES2 found them all using its HD seek mode. And in case you’re wondering, the ES2 will also play standard (non-HD) AM and FM stations.

In addition to HD Radio, the ES2 features an integrated iPod dock. Like similar iPod radios, this gives you the ability to listen to your iPod instead of the usual FM, AM or externally-connected auxiliary device – while simultaneously charging your iPod. Song title and artist information appears on the ES2’s LCD and you also get control over certain iPod functions using the ES2’s infrared remote.

Setting itself apart from those other iPod radios, the ES2 is the first device to feature an HD Radio technology called “iTunes Tagging.” Here’s how it works: while listening to your favorite HD Radio station, a song comes on that you really like. Instead of searching for a piece of paper to jot down the song info, the ES2 lets you push its “TAG” button on the front panel and in an instant stores that song’s metadata in its internal memory. The ES2 can store data for up to 50 songs in this fashion. Groovy, eh? And that’s not even the best part.