The Livio Internet Radio with Pandora isn’t really iPhone related (but hey, that is what that “Other” category is for, right?), although there is a tie-in.  It allows you to play the same custom Pandora stations that you listen to on your PC and iPhone.  It’s AWESOME!  You are not limited to whatever custom Pandora stations you create and customize (on the radio, PC, and/or iPhone) and your Pandora Quick Mix, but there is a directory of internet stations that exceeds just about any other internet radio directory that I’ve seen.  Once you locate a station by genre, location, or both, you can easily add it to your list of favorites on the device.  That is a nice feature as the station options seem endless at times.  For example, there are over 800 different “Oldies” stations  The small remote also comes with five preset for favorites that you can call up with a single button press.

I’m getting ahead of myself though.  The unit got my attention because while other options allowed you to listen to your Pandora stations, this one allows you to “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” from both the unit itself as well as the remote.  Since the strength of Pandora lies in its customization, this was a must-have for any kind of Pandora radio.  Setup is very simple.  All you have to do is enter the serial number and registration number from the radio’s setup menu at the manufacturer’s site along with your Pandora account info and the “link” is made between your radio and your Pandora account.  Of course this occurs after you have either connected the radio to your internet connection with the included eithernet cable or via Wi-Fi.  If you choose the Wi-Fi option, available connections show up.  If you have a WEP key, you can enter it with the dial on the unit.  Once it is set up with your Wi-Fi info and linked to your Pandora account, a simple re-boot by unplugging the unit and re-powering it is all that is needed.

The back-lit screen displays the station name, the bitrate of the stream (if it is an internet station), the time (automatically set), and the Wi-Fi signal strength.  Status messages come up to tell you when a station is first buffering and when you give a Pandora song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.  When the unit is off, a large digital clock is displayed (as is the alarm time if you have one set).  When you turn the unit back on, it auto-starts whatever station you were listening to when you powered it off.  This includes when the alarm goes off.  It also seems to come on at the same volume level.  

The small credit-card sized remote allows you to do everything you can do from the main unit.  As I said, it also includes five presets for favorite stations.  Holding down a numbers preset button (or the general “Fav” button) will assign the current station.  It takes about ten seconds to switch from one preset station to another.  When you consider that it is switching to a different stream URL and buffering it, that isn’t bad.  You can set both Pandora and regular Internet stations to presets, but the “up” and “down” buttons on the remote both pull up your Pandora stations by default (that is unless you are already in a menu or favorites list), so unless you have tons of Pandora stations, you may want to save your station presets for the Internet stations as they can take an extra button pushes to get to.   And while you can find new stations (or create new Pandora ones) with the little remote, it is much easier to do using the knob on the front of the radio.  This knob serves dual purpose.  In regular play mode, it acts like a volume mode.  In any input mode though, you use it to scroll through available options and then select them by pushing the knob.

The unit comes with an eithernet cable, as I mentioned, so you’ve probably already figured out that it has an eithernet port. :)  It also comes with a headphone jack on the front, and both a line in and line out jack on the back.  The included 1/8″ to RCA adapter will allow you to us that line out to connect it to a home stereo system.  Auxiliary input is selected from the main menu just like you would Pandora or Internet Radio.  

As much as I am impressed with this radio, nothing is perfect.  For example, the online user manual tells you how to set up your Pandora stations before telling you how to connect via Wi-Fi.  It also says, in a big shaded area to get your attention, to go to “www.LivioRadio.com/Pandora” to set up the link, but that URL does not work.  The proper one is in all lower case, which is supplied in the following paragraph.  This could cause some real confusion with the non-techie.  In other words, it seems that much more thought and work went into the unit itself than in documentation.  Luckily, it is very intuitive and once you get connected, the manual is pretty much un-necessary.  One big thing missing form the user manual is the fact that the station database is an online one at Reciva.com.  By registering there and linking your radio (same way you did with Pandora setup), you can browse and listed to the same stations from you PC, as well as update your Favorites list – which immediately syncs to your radio.  Options for podcasts and streams do not currently work, but I’m hoping that is on a future firmware update.

My only other suggestions would be that the Pandora stations do not indicate if the currently playing song is already marked with a thumbs-up or not.  This leads you to not know if you need to “thumb” a song or not.  I’d also love to see a “sleep” timer option and the ability to select which favorite station you want to wake to with the alarm.  Hopefully future firmware updates (yes, it does those) will add these features.  

Overall though, I am very impressed and pleased with this radio.  If you like radio, I’d recommend it.