Review: Livio Pandora Internet Radio

The first thing I do when I get into my car in the morning is turn on talk radio as I make my way into work. I'll listen to AM/FM radio most of the day. However, whenever I get in the mood for some jazz or blues, I'll plug in my headphones and search for Pandora.com on the Internet. Listening to Pandora couldn't get any easier for me with the Livio Internet Radio. This fairly lightweight radio is the size of a shoe box and fits nicely on any desktop or kitchen countertop. Right now, it lives in my bedroom, tucks me in and helps to put me to sleep every night. It has a single speaker and a round knob to control volume and navigate the on-screen menu. It also sports "thumbs up, thumbs down" buttons for choosing tunes you'd like to hear again or tunes you don't want Pandora to ever play again. Hookup of the Livio was easier than I thought since I already had an account with Pandora.com. Basically, all I had to do was pair the radio with my existing account and I was listening to tunes in no time. In order to accomplish this task, you need to log onto the Livio Web site, give your Pandora account information, radio serial number and registration ID. Instantly, I had all of my stations available to me and at my fingertips. In addition to the built-in Pandora, it also connects to 11,000 other Internet streams via Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection. The only downside to the Livio radio is that it unfortunately doesn't tune in AM/FM stations over the radio airwaves. You'll need to locate the stream of the station for which you are looking. This is also pretty simple. Just work your way through the menu and do a geographical search of a particular station. If it's a station you know you're going to want to listen to in the future, you can simply bookmark that particular station. I thought the sound quality was as good as it gets for streaming Internet radio. It obviously wasn't as clear as HD Radio as there was some distortion in the background. However, this is free streaming music so it's not going to be perfect, but for the price of the radio itself at $149.99, it's definitely worth a look. It also comes with a credit card-sized remote control and stereo line out jack for hooking up to stereo speakers.