While researching this Logitech Squeezebox Boom review, we found that this internet radio has rich full stereo sound. It also offers thousands of internet radio stations to choose from, numerous apps. These apps play MP3 audio as well, and a full-function remote control.
In this Logitech Squeezebox Boom Review, we describe these key features of the 2008 vintage model X-RB2 unit. This small, yet hi fi system is a fully self-contained unit. It has an easy-to-read, blue-green vacuum fluorescent (VFD) display. The high contrast of this type of screen looks like those bright LED displays of decades past.
This receiver was sold for several years. But it is no longer made as of this writing sadly. So if you can find this on eBay or amazon for a good price, buy it. Just beware though that the supporting website (mysqueezebox.com) could go away at any time. Thus, that would limit the radio’s access to station streams. However, so far though, we’ve enjoyed our Boom for nearly ten years, without any service dropouts.
The Boom is not much bigger than the average sized clock radio that you’re likely to find at market. It measures thirteen inches long (front left side to front right side), and five and a quarter inches tall (top front side to bottom front side). Furthermore, it weighs five pounds, and one ounce. Perhaps this is a bit heaver than typical radios, no doubt due to the rugged plastic case and large magnets in the speakers. But for this little extra weight, you get plenty of volume that easily qualifies as “high fidelity” stereo sound.
The unit has a jog wheel menu system. It also has several buttons for moving through and changing settings. But you may also control most of the functions with the remote control, shown below. Moreover, you can work basic streaming functions from your Internet-connected computer on the Logitech Squeezebox radio portal website.
The remote is about the right size for comfy fit into most small to average sized hands. It features ten buttons including: Home, Sleep, On / Off, Add to Favorites, up-down-left-right arrow keys, Volume up-down, skip back, play-pause, and skip-forward.
An indented, magnetized area on the top of the Boom provides a secure, easy-to-locate holder for storing the remote. The magnets hold the remote tightly.
Deep, full-bodied bass. 30 watts of total audio power. 15 watts per channel, as fed to the built-in speakers. Each of the four speakers (a woofer and tweeter for each of the two audio channels), is driven by its own class D audio amplifier. Exceptional sound for speech records, and surprisingly decent sound for well-recorded high fidelity music recordings and streams, given the radio’s compact size.
This radio comes with a 12-volt, 2.5 amp power adapter, with a positive tip. Always runs, at most, lukewarm. Does not get overly hot, even when listening at full volume.
You can change stations and adjust volume levels from your computer, via the portal website once your Boom is connected to the Internet and you’ve created an account on the portal and associated your radio with it; an easy to follow process.
In the years that we’ve owned our Squeezebox, we’ve always been able to play Internet radio on demand. The Logitech infrastructure has never failed in our experience, and has always been available.
You can connect to any 802-11 b/g wireless network, or via an Ethernet network cable, to your home network.
No external antennas to adjust. The Wi-Fi radio in this music center seems sensitive enough to work well with WiFi signals in any position, so long as it’s not too far from the Wi-Fi access point.
You can set bass and treble levels via the on-screen menu system. Or, do it from the remote control as well.
Like an old-fashioned car radio, this Squeezebox has six pushbuttons. These let you instantly switch among the first six stations in your favorites list. Or, you can program each button with a specific station.
You can set many alarms, and for each one, set not only the time of day it sounds, but what sound you want it to make. Furthermore, you may also choose which stream you’d like it to play when each alarm goes off.
The built-in clock sets itself to internet time when you connect the radio to a network to the internet. This happens within ten seconds of pressing the power-on button.
Back panel ports and plugs include the power supply, Ethernet, line in, and subwoofer / earphone output plugs.
Display brightness, fonts, and time formats can be adjusted via the extensive Settings menu.
Located on the top of the radio, this button allows setting of a sleep time, in which the unit will play before going silent. This button also serves as a snooze button if pressed during alarm sounding.
You can play MP3, WAV, WMA, FLAC formatted audio streams. However, we haven’t been able to find any AAC or AAC+ streams that this receiver plays, though the documentation says that it can indeed play AAC.
This radio can also run apps (similar to those found on smartphones), that provide access to even more audio sources besides Internet radio stations; sources such podcasts, sound effects, and players for many of the major media networks and outlets.
By working the jogging control, previous, next, and play buttons, you can move around through the included internet radio station and podcast library from the radio itself. Thus, you don’t need a computer to enjoy the bulk of the radio’s functionality, though you do need one to initially set up the Internet functionality of this wireless music device.
Only the vacuum fluorescent display area on the front of the case gets warm. The rest of the case stays cool to the touch. Even after hours of music listening, cool operation continues. No doubt this is due to the high efficiency class D power amplifiers inside. These give off very little heat given how much power they provide.
Requires accounts on these services prior to playing however.
All Booms linked to the same MySqueezeBox account get the same favorites, podcasts, and playlists from the portal.
This server supports playing of your local music library on the Boom. It runs on a computer on your local network. So you would need a computer to use it.
No place on this unit to plug in, control, or charge your iPod devices. E.g. No iPod docking connector or lightning port. But you can play the iPod through the Boom’s auxiliary input port. But to do that, you’ll need a 3.5mm male to 3.5mm male stereo patch cord.
This radio does not currently play AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) or AAC-plus radio streams. So this is sad, since so many of the big internet radio stations use these advanced codecs, and are thus, not playable on this radio.
The Boom does not include a built in AM / FM radio.
According to Amazon.com, this net radio is no longer manufactured. So, given the evolving and fleeting nature of Internet and computer-based technologies, it’s only a matter of perhaps a small time, before this device becomes obsolete and non functional.
New copies of the Squeezebox Boom sell for north of $500, and we expect this price to rise further as these radios become rarer. They are highly sought, even today.
Many Internet stations have migrated to Advanced Audio Coding stream format, due to its better audio frequency response at lower data rates. Fortunately however, most of the bigger stations doing this, are still supplying the older format MP3 and WMA streams for legacy devices like this one. However, without this ability, this radio will become less usable over time, as more Internet broadcasters take down these older formats.
We’re pleased with the big sound and stereo performance of the Logitech Squeezebox Boom. The speakers sound further apart than they actually are. So this gives a more expansive listening experience. Indeed the instruments and voices seem to come at you from places in the room where there are no speakers. So it’s an awesome sound stage effect. We wish they still made this radio, as wondrous sound and reliability should be virtually timeless traits.
But aside from the end-of-life-cycle, we see no reason not to own the Boom. This is really true if you can buy it for less than $200. You can sometimes find this unit on sites like eBay and Amazon for that price.
Finally, we like the Boom a lot, and so, overall, we’d rate it at 96 out of 100.
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