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November 18, 2004
Review: XM SKYFi 2 & XM Radio
The XM service itself is great in terms of content. The variety is very impressive and most of it is commercial free. The playlists themselves seem staggered so you don't hear much repeating if you listen to it around the same time every day. When I first got the Roady and went on a 9 hour road trip, I noticed the second or third day that I was hearing the same songs but they were about 4 hours later that day than when I heard them previously.
I purchased an XM Roady about 6 months ago and have been pretty pleased with the service and the device but I don't get to listen to it often because it's not convenient to move from the car to the house. I recently picked up a Delphi XM SKYFi 2 for $169.99 at Best Buy which included the car kit. If you already own SKYFi home or auto docks, you can pick the device up alone for around $99.
The SKYFi 2 kit for $169.99 comes with the radio, an auto crade with vent clips, a dash mount, 12 volt power adapter, small antenna, and cassette adapter. It builds upon the older SKYFi's feature list by including a 30 minute TiVo like rewind, pause and fast forward function in addition to supporting stock quotes and sports scores. It also has a built in FM modulator for those who decide not to use the cassette adapter or directly connect it to their stereo.
Usability:
The radio itself has a large 5-line reversible lcd display with a white backlight. The contrast is good and the test can be reversed so its white on a black background instead of the normal black on a white background. At any given moment you can choose from 4 display modes which vary on the standard mode which displays time, signal strength, channel, artist and song title. The new SKYFi 2 introduces stock tickers, sports scores and large artist/title scrolling display modes. The buttons are decently placed and the only gripe I have as well as others is the way the scroll wheel turns. Unlike scroll wheel mice which usually have deeper grooves the wheel "clicks" into when it turns, the ones on the SKYFi 2 are barely felt. The wheel also has a tendency to jump back when stop scrolling. Again this is not a major concern. The TiVo-like functionality is interesting but I haven't found myself using it much. It allows you to pause and play tracks in memory.
The car and home cradles are nicely weighted with big rubber pads to keep their position stationary. The home cradle I received is flakey so I'll be exchanging it. Sometimes the unit will go to no signal and the cable needs to be fiddled where the connector is to get things back to normal. The cradle system is a must for those thinking about transporting their radio between cars, the office or home.
Audio Quality:
The audio quality depends on two factors which are connection method and the XM compression itself. The ideal connection method is using audio patch cables through the 3.5mm jack on the back of the cradles. The FM modulator or a cassette adapter can be used in the car but don't sound as good as a direct connection, the FM method sounding the worst.
The XM audio feed is compressed to varying degrees on different channels but overall I would say it's equivalent to a 96kbps mp3. XM tends to use more bandwidth for some of the more demanding channels and less on traffic and talk radio.
Conclusion:
Overall I would definitely recommend XM radio and the SKYFi 2 unit to anyone who enjoys variety on the radio but doesn't like to listen to commercials. The talk, comedy and news channels also make it worth the money. The only thing both Sirius and XM need to be careful of is over-compressing the audio feeds to add more content. Quality is more important than quantity to me so it will be interesting to see as time goes on how both companies choose to enhance their offerings. The MyFi unit which costs $349.99 and was just released from XM aims to be a portable unit which has over 5 hours of storage to buffer programming and comes with car and home kits. It was overkill for me and probably wouldn't get used for its intended purpose as much since I use an iPod for portable listening.
Posted by beamz at November 18, 2004 11:06 PM
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