Goodmans GPS280

Bought my Goodmans GPS280 in 2005 for £64 ,cheapest i've seen thus far £146. I love the DAB, excellent CD player.

This is a heap of rubbish, and the replacement unit supplied by Goodmans lasted for 2 days before becoming useless. Buy something else, as there are better options available.

Bought the Goodmans GPS-280 in October 2003, when it was the only DAB device under £100 about. And you got a free CD player with it to.

It's a peculiar machine that can't decide if it is a portable stereo, a kitchen radio or a hifi separate element. The design is a weird cross of these various forms, which means that if you put it on a shelf all the controls are on top. There are loads of them, confusingly laid out and it is quite hard to drive directly - it's a lot easier to use the remote.

The problem here is that the remote is crummy. It was clearly built for the least possible amount of money. Cheap 'pop membrane' buttons and you have to point it really carefully at the machine to get it to work. This aspect is the only really tiresome thing about it.

Reception is OK, although we got muddy wurblings and drop outs until a connection to our existing FM aerial was made, at which point it worked fine. (It has a socket for an external aerial).

It has had over 2000 hours use in two years and is still working fine, although I expect the remote volume buttons to give out soon.

The FM tuner is a tiny little dial thing tacked on the back corner. the same thing you get in freebie portable analoge FM radios, and is almost uselss. Ignore it.

The sound quality is OK, but because the speakers point up you lose something. It sounds better if you prop it up on end in the 'portable stereo' atttiude, but then it's somewhat unstable. As I said the confused design makes it a jack or all trades, master of none, sort of machine.

Haven't used the CD much but it works. It also has line out facilities which we have never tried, but which mean you could connect it to better speakers if you wanted.

One other mild irritation is the start-up time. It takes a good 4 seconds to make a noise after you turn it on. This, combined with the unreliable remote, is annoying. I don't know if all DAB radios do this, or if the Goodmans is particularly slow.

Overall we are very pleased with DAB in general - with extra stations like the world service and BBC7 and 6, planet rock etc. I will be buying more of them as the prices come down to something more reasonable for a radio.

This Goodmans GPS280 was my first foray into the DAB Digital Radio market, I picked up the GPS280 in a half price sale, while it's far from the best DAB radio out there, it is a handy mutifunction device which I'm currently using in the nursery.

The DAB tuner works well, with decent reception even without using the supplied external aerial. I had no reception problems, picking up over 40 stations all of which played without dropping the signal.

The included FM radio would have been handly if it had been a PLL tuner with presets, etc. However it is a cheap dial-based manual tuner, so is less useful than it sould have been.

While the CD player isn't fantastic, it is a useful addition to the DAB radio if you want the ability to play CDs and don't already have a CD player in the room.

The unit itself is a large beast, taking up a good deal of room in comparison to other DAB radios. The controls on the radio itself and badly laid out and confusing, though the remote is a little better. The various functions of the GPS280 work well enough, though the speakers don't give enough bass, leaving most sounds too 'tinny'. The original retail price for this radio was far too high, but if you can pick it up cheap then it's a handy piece of kit.