Teac R-X1 review

Ever fancied pinning a radio on the wall? No, us neither, but Teac's wall-mountable DAB radio is certainly unique in the market, and it pushes out great quality sound for a reasonable price.

It includes an ultra-thin speaker and the unit can be wall-mounted using the brackets provided, but it's slightly misleading as the R-X1 isn't flat.

The speaker itself relies on NXT technology, something we've seen used on various home cinema speaker systems from Teac and Mission, to name but two.

Back in black

Aesthetically speaking, the R-X1 is quite something. Dressed in black and with a grille-less speaker that spreads across most of the front, all of the controls are situated on the right-hand side under a classy LCD screen.

Better still, the controls themselves are huge, square and touch-sensitive affairs that aren't saddled with dual uses that blight many a feature-loaded DAB radio these days.

Despite its diminutive design and focus on quality rather than extra features, the R-X1 manages to house a 3.5mm input that's ideal for connecting a MP3 player.

There's also a slim, but weighty, remote that contains exclusive controls including 10 presets for DAB stations, a dimmer control for the LCD screen and an option for adjusting treble and bass levels. Additionally, there's a button for choosing a DAB station's sister station, which makes it possible to switch between BBC 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Xtra, for example.

It's a fine feature and far superior a remote control to, say, most TVs or DVD players and it really comes into its own if you do pin the R-X1 to a wall far from where you're sitting.

That isn't a bad idea because sound quality is excellent. The overall audio is a little flat straight out of the box, but by adding some more bass and a bit of tinkering with the treble levels, it's pretty easy to achieve a strong, well-rounded performance that's as suited to music stations as it is to dialogue based programmes.

Lean pickings

The only slight criticism we'd make is that left on a desktop, the R-X1 leans at a slight angle. That's a problem because despite most of the controls being on the unit's lower half, operating the dial for switching between stations can cause the entire unit to topple backwards.

With the R-X1, Teac has built a DAB radio around the NXT speaker, rather than the other way around, but this approach doesn't have the negative approach you might expect.

The amplifier on the back of this flat-packed DAB radio does render the marketing - 'You can hang it on a wall!' - largely meaningless, but the R-X1 makes a great tabletop DAB radio that's versatile and well-built.